OF  THE 
UNIVERSITY 
OF 


EOUSSEAU 


PIONEERS    IN    EDUCATION 

JEAN  JACQUES  ROUSSEAU 

AND  EDUCATION  FROM  NATURE 

BY 
GABRIEL  COMPAYR^ 

CORRESPONDENT  OP  THE  INSTITUTE  ;  DIRECTOR  OF  THE  ACADEMY 

OF  LYONS;    AUTHOR  OF   " PSYCHOLOGY  APPLIED   TO 

EDUCATION,"  "LECTURES  ON  PEDAGOGY," 

"A  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY,"  ETC. 


TRANSLATED  BY 
R.  P.  JAGO 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  &  CO. 
PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT,  1907, 
BY  THOMAS  Y.   CROWELL  &  COMPANY. 


PUBLISHED,  SEPTEMBER,  1907. 


C7 


CONTENTS  AND   SUMMARY 

PAGE 

PREFACE vii 

I.  Novelty  of  Rousseau's  views  on  education.  —  6 mile  a 

mixture  of  truth  and  error.  —  Of  greater  importance  to 
lay  stress  on  the  abiding  truths  than  to  refute  uto- 
pianisms 1 

II.  Rousseau  an  initiator  and  revolutionary. — Despite  his 
originality,  he  had  his  forerunners :  Montaigne,  Fenelon, 
Locke,  etc.  —  Turgot  had  previously  preached  the  re- 
turn to  nature.  —  A  study  of  children  necessary  in 
order  to  educate  them.  —  The  psychology  of  infancy 
contained  in  Emile.  —  Rousseau  had  observed  the  chil- 
dren of  others.  —  His  deficiency  in  professional  experi- 
ence. —  Lacking  in  connected  study.  —  Influence  of 
personal    reminiscences    on    Roussjeau's    pedagogical 
theories.  —  Emile  is  self-taught.  —  Emile's  education  is 
often  conceived  by  Rousseau  as  a  fancied  antithesis  to 
the  realities  of  his  own  life  and  character.  —  Rousseau, 

in  his  visionary  structure,  reacted  against  himself       .      6 

III.  Essential  principles  of  Emile,  and  their  results.  —  The 
doctrine  of  original  innocence.  —  Positive  statements. 

—  Pessimism  in  regard  to  society :  optimism  in  regard 
to  nature.  —  Return  to  the  natural  man  advocated.  — 
In  consequence,  " negative"  education  until  the  age  of 
twelve.  —  No  moral  authority.  —  No  didactic  teaching. 

—  Paradoxes  on  paradoxes.  — Neither  punishments  nor 
rewards. — The  child  is  of  necessity  subjected  to  the  laws 
of  nature.  —  Suppression  of  the  authority  of  parents  and 
masters :   Rousseau's  capital  error.  —  Inactive,  expec- 


M652587 


iv  CONTENTS  AND  SUMMARY 

PAGE 

tant  education.  —  Abnormal  isolation  of  Emile.  — 
Contrived  situations.  —  Tricks  of  composition. — De- 
spite his  contradictions,  Rousseau  is  a  partisan  of 
domestic  education.  —  Praise  of  family  life.  —  The  duty 
of  mothers  to  nurse  their  children.  —  Obligations  of 
fathers.  —  Another  paradox:  "successive"  education. 

—  Artificial  division  of  the  life  of  the  child  and  the  youth 
into  three  periods.  —  Correct  views  concerning  the  char- 
acteristics proper  to  each  age.  —  Is  it  necessary  to  treat 
the  child  as  a  man?  —  Unjustifiable  postponement  of 
moral   education.  —  Religious   training   delayed   until 
adolescence. — The  Profession  de  foi  du  vicaire  Savoyard. 

—  If  Nature  should  speak,  with  what  she  could  right- 
fully reproach  Rousseau 20 

IV.  The  eternal  truths  of  Emile.  —  Physical  education.  — 
Minute  directions  regarding  the  hygiene  of  childhood. 

—  Importance  of  bodily  exercise  from  a  moral  view- 
point. —  Education  in  the  country.  —  Emile  is  taught 
a  manual  trade :   why  ?  —  Education  of  the  senses.  — 
Things,   things !  —  Exercise   of  the  judgment  in  the 
domain  of  tangible  knowledge.  —  Programme  of  utili- 
tarian studies.  —  The   art   of  action.  —  Necessity  of 
adapting  education  to  life.  —  Neither  literature  nor  his- 
tory. —  Regarding  the  last  point,  Rousseau  makes  a 
retraction  in  the  Considerations  sur  le  gouvernement  de 
Pologne.  —  As  for  the  ancient  languages,  they  are  not  a 
utility.  —  Nature      study.  —  Astronomy,     physics.  — 
Geography  without  maps.  —  Emile  at  fifteen :    more 
teachable   than   taught.  —  Education   of  the  will.  — 
Emile  brought  up  in  liberty.  —  Make  the  child  happy. 

—  Emile,  however,  knows  how  to    bear  suffering.  — 
Introduction  to  social  feelings.  —  Emile  a  philanthro- 
pist. — Rousseau  has  not  written  directly  for  the  people, 
but  he  has,  however,  prepared  the  way  for  popular  in- 


CONTENTS  AND  SUMMARY 


struction. — What  he  wished  to  form  was  "just  a  man. " 

—  Unconcern     regarding    professional     education.  — 
Occasional  awakening  of  the  practical  spirit  in  Rous- 
seau. —  Travel  abroad  for  purposes  of  study.  —  Emile 
learns  on  the  spot  two  or  three  modern  languages       .    52 

V.  Education  of  Sophie,  the  ideal  woman.  —  The  treatise 

turns  into  a  romance.  —  Sophie  is  not,  however,  alto- 
gether an  imaginary  being:  she  existed. — Rousseau's 
mistakes  in  his  views  on  the  education  of  women.  — 
Sophie's  education  is  the  reverse  of  Emile's.  —  Subordi- 
nation of  the  woman  to  the  man.  —  Rousseau  does 
not  admit  the  equality  of  the  sexes.  —  Incomplete 
psychology.  —  Woman's  defects.  —  Her  qualities.  — 
Woman  should  remain  woman.  —  Rousseau  not  a 
woman's  rights  man.  —  Sophie's  education  limited.  — 
"  Household  education."  —  Needlework.  —  A  young 
woman  should  go  into  society.  —  She  should  be  given 
religious  instruction  in  good  season.  —  Woman  should 
think,  in  order  to  fulfil  her  duties  as  a  wife  and  mother. 

—  Her  personality  slightly  overlooked. — The  authority 
which  she  exercises  is  based  on  her  natural  graces.  — 
Sophie  is  already  to  an  extent  the  modern  lovely  and 
attractive  woman,  created  not  for  the  church  and  the 
convent,  but  for  family  life 81 

VI.  Success  of  Emile.  —  Extraordinary  influence  of  Rous- 
seau. —  Numerous  works  in  imitation  or  in  refutation. 

—  L'Eleve  de  la  nature  by  de  Beaurieu.  —  Effect  of 
Rousseau's  inspiration  on  the  French  Revolution.  — 
Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre  and  the  Ecole  de  la  patrie.  — 
Mme.  Roland's  admiration  for  Rousseau.  —  Mme.  de 
Stael's,  Mme.  de  Genlis,  Mme.  de  Necker  de  Saussure. 

—  International  reputation  of  Emile.  —  Enthusiastic 
testimonies  from  Germany.  —  Basedow  and  Lavater. 

—  Kant  and  his  Traite  de  pedagogic.  —  Goethe,  Schiller, 


vi  CONTENTS  AND  SUMMARY 

PAGE 

J.-P.  Richter,  Herder,  Pestalozzi,  etc.  —  Favourable 
appreciation  of  English  writers:  John  Morley,  R.  H. 
Quick,  etc.  —  The  least  success  in  the  United  States.  — 
However,  American  education  strives  to  attain  the  ideal 
dreamed  of  by  Rousseau.  —  How  Rousseau's  pedagogi- 
cal spirit  has  insinuated  itself  into  modern  methods  of 
teaching  and  educational  practices.  —  It  has  raised  and 
ennobled  the  educator's  part.  —  How  he  is  at  times  a 
stoic.  —  He  remains  a  great  enticer  of  intellects.  —  Why 

he  will  never  cease  to  be  loved 100 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  119 


PKEFACE 

IN  publishing  a  series  of  monographs  on  the 
"  Pioneers  in  Education/'  those  of  all  nations  and 
of  every  age,  we  have  several  aims  in  view. 

In  the  first  place,  we  wish  to  represent  the  men 
who  deserve  to  have  their  names  on  the  honour 
list  in  the  history  of  education,  all  who  have  in 
any  remarkable  way  contributed  to  the  reform 
and  progress  of  the  instruction  and  advancement 
of  humanity ;  to  represent  them  as  they  lived ;  to 
show  what  they  thought  and  did ;  and  to  exhibit 
their  doctrines  and  methods,  and  their  moral 
character. 

But  after  having  portrayed  each  heroic  figure 
clearly,  we  must  also  sketch  his  background,  the 
general  tendencies  of  the  epoch  in  which  the  re- 
former lived,  the  scholastic  institutions  of  his  coun- 
try, and  the  genius,  so  to  speak,  of  his  race,  in 
order  that  we  may  set  forth  in  successive  pictures 
the  struggles  and  the  progress  of  the  civilized  races. 

In  the  last  place,  we  wish  to  do  more  than  write 
a  historical  narrative  merely.  Our  ambition  is 
higher :  it  is  to  bring  face  to  face  ideas  held  long 
ago  with  modern  opinions,  with  the  needs  and 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

aspirations  of  society  to-day,  and  thus  to  prepare 
the  way  for  a  solution  of  the  pedagogical  problems 
confronting  the  twentieth  century. 

If  we  have  chosen  J.-J.  Eousseau  to  open  this 
gallery  of  portraits,  it  is  not  because  he  was  a  sure 
guide,  an  irreproachable  leader.  But  in  the  cause 
of  education  he  has  been  a  great  inciter  of  ideas  in 
others,  the  initiator  of  the  modern  movement,  the 
"  leader  "  of  most  of  the  educators  who  came  after 
him.  Pestalozzi,  Spencer,  to  cite  only  two,  have 
undoubtedly  been  his  disciples.  He  has  assailed 
the  routine  of  tradition;  he  has  broken  short  off 
with  the  past ;  and  if  he  has  not  always  sown  the 
seed  in  the  field  of  education,  he  has  at  least 
watered  it,  rid  it  of  encumbering  weeds,  leaving  to 
his  successors  the  care  of  its  cultivation  and  fertili- 
zation for  later  flowering.  We  therefore  render 
but  simple  justice  and  place  him  where  he  belongs, 
when  we  mention  him  first. 

We  dedicate  this  study  and  those  which  follow 
it  to  all  people  who  are  interested  in  the  cause  of 
education,  and  who  think,  as  we  do,  that  this  ques- 
tion is  the  vital  one,  the  one  upon  which  depends 
the  future  of  the  people ;  without  which  no  social 
reform  is  possible;  that,  finally,  the  progress  of 
education  is  the  question  of  life  and  death  for  soci- 
ety and  the  individual  alike. 


ROUSSEAU 


FOR  two  centuries  the  works  of  J.-  J.Rousseau  have 
been  read  and  reread  and  perpetually  annotated. 
Everything  concerning  him  having  been  said  again 
and  again  during  this  period,  pretensions  to  origi- 
nality in  so  minutely  explored  a  subject  are  scarcely 
possible.  It  is,  however,  always  interesting  to  return 
to  the  ideas  of  an  independent  and  intrepid  thinker, 
one  in  whose  writings  paradox  and  truth  are  sown 
broadcast,  whose  extraordinary  influence  over  the 
minds  of  men  is  a  kind  of  fascination,  and  of  whom 
M.  Melchior  de  Vogue  could  recently  say  that  "he 
had  monopolized  our  whole  political  and  social 
future."  Rousseau's  ideas  on  education,  which 
also  we  intend  to  discuss  here,  were  so  original  when 
Emile  was  published  in  1762  that  they  still  have 
claims  to  novelty,  and  many  a  pamphlet,  many  a 
book  on  education,  which  in  1899  or  1900  earned 
for  its  author  the  reputation  of  being  a  daring  in- 
novator is,  nevertheless,  merely  the  reissue  of  some 

i 


2  ROUSSEAU 

of  the  theories  dear  to  Rousseau.  Is  it  not  also 
true  that  the  light  of  progress  and  the  broader 
horizons  revealed  by  the  succession  of  the  ages  are 
able  to  rejuvenate  and  reillumine  a  subject  to  all 
appearance  exhausted? 

Emile  is  a  knotty,  tangled  book,  full  of  matter, 
and  to  such  an  extent  is  the  true  mingled  with  the 
false,  imagination  and  hazardous  dream  with  keen, 
accurate  observation  and  reasoning  power,  that  at 
first  a  full  comprehension  of  it  is  impossible.  It  is 
not  one  of  those  simple,  straightforward  works  which 
yield  their  secret  from  the  outset ;  it  is  an  intricate 
composition,  half  novel,  half  philosophical  treatise, 
which  —  supposing  that  Rousseau  had  not  written 
La  Nouvelle  Heloise  —  would  be  sufficient  to  justify 
the  title  of  a  recent  study  by  M.  Faguet,  J.-J. 
Rousseau,  romancier  fran$ais,  just  as  it  gave  him 
the  right  to  be  called  "a  psychologist  of  the  first 
degree/7  an  appellation  bestowed  on  him  by  Mr. 
Davidson,  an  American  author.  The  propositions 
advanced  in  it  by  Rousseau,  with  all  the  ardor  of  his 
fervid  imagination  and  all  the  allurements  of  an  en- 
chanted pen,  are  at  first  disconcerting  to  the  reader : 
some  minds  are  captivated,  others  roused  to  distrust. 
Many  are  the  perusals  necessary  before  a  path  can 
be  traced  through  this  confusion  of  philosophic 
meditation  and  sentimental  fancy.  Did  not  his  own 


ROUSSEAU  3 

steps  wander,  as  when,  for  example,  having  intro- 
duced Emile  to  us  as  an  orphan,  he  makes  him  the 
recipient  of  letters  from  his  father  and  mother  as  a 
means  of  inducing  him  to  learn  to  read  ? 

Though  at  first  one  is  tempted  to  protest  against 
the  audacities  and  blunders  of  a  venturesome  mind 
lacking  in  balance,  yet,  on  reflection,  it  becomes  ap- 
parent that  the  greater  part  of  his  paradoxes  conceal 
a  fund  of  truth  —  not,  indeed,  a  commonplace,  but 
an  original  conception,  a  thought  reaching  into  the 
future,  the  accuracy  of  which  will,  little  by  little,  be 
proved  by  experience.  Oftentimes  the  myths  with 
which  he  seemed  most  infatuated  receive  from  him- 
self a  decisive  reply.  Elsewhere,  to  find  oneself  in 
agreement  with  him,  it  is  only  necessary  to  set  aside 
the  tricks  of  style  with  which  he  chose  to  envelop 
his  ideas.  In  short,  Emile  is  a  combative  book  "full 
of  fire  and  smoke, "  and  as  on  a  battlefield  a  just  idea 
of  the  positions  which  have  been  carried  can  only 
be  obtained  after  the  smoke  of  the  cannonade  has 
cleared  away,  so,  to  grasp  and  distinguish  the  re- 
sults of  Rousseau's  rapid  advance  on  the  field  of  the 
new  education,  the  sound  of  the  sonorous  sentences, 
the  tumult  of  the  figures  of  speech,  apostrophe,  and 
prosopopoeia  in  his  inflamed  harangues  must  be 
allowed  to  die  away.  Unquestionably,  certain  por- 
tions of  Emile  have  grown  old,  but  others  have 


4  ROUSSEAU 

required  the  passage  of  a  hundred  years  and 
more  ere  they  could  be  truly  understood  and  could 
present  themselves  in  their  full  force. 

The  preceding  sentences  describe  the  spirit  in 
which  this  study  has  been  conceived :  less  to  criticise 
Rousseau  than  to  bring  to  light  the  treasures  of 
abiding  truth  which  he  has,  as  it  were,  buried  in  a 
book  described  truly  by  him  as  "the  most  useful 
and  considerable "  of  his  writings.  It  were  an  easy 
matter  to  convict  him  of  flagrant  utopianism :  this 
commonplace  task  of  refutation  will  occupy  us  no 
more  than  is  absolutely  necessary.  Without  con- 
cealing any  of  the  sophisms  of  Emile,  our  principal 
aim  will  be  to  ascertain  in  what  Rousseau's  guidance 
may  still  be  useful  to  us.  True  criticism  is  that 
which  insists  upon  the  good,  and  deals  with  the  bad 
only  to  explain  it.  Rather  for  posterity  and  for  the 
future  did  Rousseau  speak  than  for  his  contem- 
poraries and  the  period  in  which  he  lived.  In  the 
forgotten  recesses  of  Emile  lurk  more  than  one 
reflection  which,  hitherto  unperceived,  proves  to  be 
fruitful  in  instruction  for  the  people  of  our  time,  and 
directly  suited  to  present  requirements;  so  great 
was  the  perspicacity  of  a  philosopher,  a  "finder  of 
hidden  springs,"  who,  thirty  years  in  advance,  had 
predicted  the  French  Revolution  at  the  same  time 
that  he  was  preparing  it.  Far  greater  in  importance, 


ROUSSEAU  5 

however,  than  a  multitude  of  isolated  truths,  is  the 
general  spirit  animating  the  entire  book.  Emile  de- 
serves to  remain  the  eternal  object  of  the  educator's 
meditation,  were  it  only  because  it  is  an  act  of  faith 
and  trust  in  humanity. 


II 


ROUSSEAU  is  truly  an  initiator ;  nay  more,  a  revo- 
lutionary. He  forestalled  the  generations  of  1789, 
even  those  of  1793,  which  claimed  to  be  the  re- 
constitutors  of  society  and  the  regenerators  of  the 
human  race,  as  expressed  in  Barere's  energetic  speech 
to  his  colleagues  of  the  Convention,  "You  are  con- 
voked for  the  recommencement  of  history."  In  such 
times  of  crisis  and  disturbance  the  attention  of 
vigilant  thinkers  is  naturally  directed  to  children 
and  education ;  for  by  education  alone  can  one  expect 
to  guide  new  souls  along  the  paths  of  a  regenerated 
existence.  Such  was  Rousseau's  ambition.  He 
was  the  reformer,  the  dreamer,  if  you  will,  who,  in 
his  ardent  protest  against  realities  which  he  con- 
demns, aspires  in  all  things  to  a  radical  renovation 
of  human  institutions.  This  appeal  to  the  ideal  - 
to  leave  unmentioned  those  first  attempts  by  which 
he  had  already  trained  his  critical  enthusiasm  — 
had  as  its  result  the  splendid  trilogy  of  his  principal 
works,  published  in  quick  succession  in  three  years, 
La  Nouvelle  Heloise,  in  1759,  the  Contrat  social  and 

6 


ROUSSEAU  7 

Emile  in  a  single  year,  1762;  three  masterpieces 
which,  despite  diversity  of  form  and  subject,  proceed 
from  a  common  inspiration,  tending  equally,  as  they 
do,  to  the  reformation  of  society,  the  first  in  its 
domestic  morals,  the  second  in  its  political  constitu- 
tion, and  lastly  Emile,  in  the  laws  of  education  for 
children  and  youths. 

Powerful  as  may  be  Rousseau's  inventive  origi- 
nality, we  are  far  from  claiming  that  his  educational 
system,  which  for  eight  years  occupied  his  medita- 
tions, is  a  stroke  of  genius,  a  miraculous  revelation, 
neither  prepared  nor  announced  by  anything  in  the 
past.  Rousseau  had  his  forerunners  and  inspirers. 
A  Benedictine  —  Dom  Cajot  —  who  might  have  em- 
ployed his  time  to  better  purpose,  wrote  a  large 
volume  on  Rousseau's  Plagiarisms:  the  plagiarisms 
we  deny,  but  imitation  and  indebtedness  must  be 
admitted.  The  glory  of  even  the  most  original  gen- 
iuses suffers  no  diminution  though  it  be  established 
that  some  of  their  most  famous  conceptions  were 
dimly  perceived  and  outlined  before  they  succeeded, 
as  it  were,  in  giving  substance  to  vague  intellectual 
shadow  by  the  intensity  of  their  personal  reflection. 
Rousseau  was  impregnated  with  Montaigne  and 
quotes  him  constantly.  He  had  read  and  "  de- 
voured" the  Port  Royal  books.  Fenelon,  "wise" 
Locke,  "good"Rollin,  and  "  learned  "Fleury  dictated 


8  ROUSSEAU 

some  of  his  finest  precepts.  Locke,  with  his  practical 
mind  and  somewhat  prosy  sound  sense,  doubtless 
has  no  great  resemblance  to  Rousseau;  he  inspired 
him,  nevertheless,  in  his  campaign  against  weak, 
effeminate  education,  and  also  against  " bookish" 
instruction.  Rousseau  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
familiar  with  Rabelais,  yet  there  are  obvious  simi- 
larities between  Emile's  education  and  that  which 
Epistemon  instituted  for  the  profit  of  young  Gar- 
gantua,  that  other  imaginary  being  and  pupil  of 
nature.  Not  only  did  Rousseau  study  and  annotate 
the  Projet  de  paix  perpetuelle  by  the  abbe  of  Saint- 
Pierre,  that  man  so  fertile  in  projects,  he  continues 
it  by  his  utilitarian  tendencies  and  taste  for  ethical 
education.  Other  names  might  well  be  mentioned. 
.  .  .  But  the  author  of  Emile  transfigures  what- 
ever he  touches,  and  transforms  all  that  he  borrows. 
His  exuberant  imagination  gives  fresh  form  and 
color  to  ideas  lent  by  others :  timid,  they  become 
imperious;  vague,  they  obtain  a  sharp  definition; 
like  feeble  shrubs,  which,  transplanted  to  a  rich  and 
fertile  soil,  grow  up  into  vigorous  trees. 

Of  all  Rousseau's  predecessors  it  is  perhaps  Turgot 
who  most  clearly  traced  out  the  new  paths.  The 
author  of  Emile  does  not  appear,  indeed,  to  have  had 
any  knowledge  of  the  views  which  Turgot  expounded 
in  the  long  epistle, — a  veritable  memoir, — which  he 


ROUSSEAU  9 

addressed  in  1751  to  Mme.  de  Graffigny,  the  then 
celebrated  authoress  of  Lettres  peruviennes.  It  is  not 
a  rare  thing,  however,  for  minds  in  motion  to  meet  at 
the  same  period  of  time  in  the  same  inspirations 
without  mutual  arrangement.  Earlier  than  Rousseau 
by  ten  years,  and  with  equal  conviction,  Turgot 
preached  the  return  to  nature.  "Our  education," 
said  he,  "is  mere  pedantry:  everything  is  taught  us 
quite  against  nature."- -"Nature  must  be  studied 
and  consulted,  so  that  she  may  be  assisted  and 
we  be  saved  the  detriment  of  thwarting  her."  — 
"Children's  heads  are  filled  with  a  mass  of  abstract 
notions  which  they  cannot  grasp,  and  all  the  time 
nature  is  calling  them  to  her  through  every  percep- 
tible object."  Down  to  the  fundamental  maxim  of 
Emile  on  the  original  innocence  of  our  inclinations, 
everything  has  already  been  admitted  by  Turgot: 
"All  the  virtues  have  been  sown  by  nature  in  the 
heart  of  man :  the  one  thing  needful  is  to  let  them 
blossom  forth." 

The  examples  quoted  are  sufficient  to  make  it 
apparent  that  ideas  in  germ  were  diffused  in  the 
atmosphere  around  Rousseau  and  that  he  collected 
them  for  development.  It  is,  however,  no  less  ap- 
parent that  from  himself,  from  his  own  rich  store 
and  a  priori  views  of  human  nature,  if  not  from  a 
practical  experience  which  he  lacked,  was  drawn  the 


10  ROUSSEAU 

substance  of  his  treatise  De  VEducation.  Rousseau 
reasoned  and  imagined  still  more  than  he  beheld 
and  observed.  This  is  not  because  he  overlooked  the 
necessity  for  observation :  he  was  fully  alive  to  it 
and  knew  exactly  in  what  he  was  deficient  to  treat 
with  competence  the  great  subject  upon  which  he 
was  entering.  This  is  proved  by  the  letter  written 
by  him  to  one  of  his  protectresses,  Mme.  de  Crequy, 
on  the  15th  of  January,  1759,  when,  La  Nouvelle 
Helolse  being  finished,  he  had  begun  in  earnest  the 
composition  of  JZmile:  "  Speaking  of  education, 
there  are  some  ideas  on  this  subject  which  I  should 
be  tempted  to  put  on  paper  if  I  had  a  little  assistance ; 
but  some  observations  which  I  cannot  supply  are 
necessary.  You,  Madam,  are  a  mother  and,  though 
devout,  a  philosopher;  you  have  educated  your  son. 
Were  you  willing,  in  your  spare  moments,  to  jot 
down  some  reflections  on  this  matter  and  com- 
municate them  to  me,  you  would  be  well  repaid 
for  your  trouble  should  they  assist  me  in  the  pro- 
duction of  a  useful  work."  The  unnatural  father 
who  had  not  reared  his  own  offspring  was  reduced 
to  begging  the  experience  of  others.  .  .  . 

Rousseau  was  aware,  then,  that  a  study  of  child- 
hood is  necessary  before  rules  for  the  management 
of  children  can  be  established.  If  it  is  correct  to 
say  that  he  endowed  France  with  a  new  literature 


ROUSSEAU  11 

and  that  he  was  one  of  the  ancestors  of  romanticism, 
it  is  equally  correct  to  affirm  that  in  his  manner  he 
inaugurated  those  important  studies  which  for  some 
years  have  been  in  vogue  under  the  name  of  "  psy- 
chology of  the  child."  A  well-stocked  chapter  on 
this  new  psychology  could  easily  be  made  by  collect- 
ing the  numerous  accurate,  subtle  observations  on 
the  character  and  tastes  of  infancy  which  are 
scattered  through  the  long  pages  of  Emile.  "  Chil- 
dren always  think  only  of  the  present.  ...  I  know 
of  nothing  for  which,  with  a  little  ingenuity,  one 
cannot  inspire  them  with  a  taste,  a  passion  even, 
and  this  without  rendering  them  vain  or  jealous  of 
the  acquirements  of  others.  Their  vivacity,  their 
imitative  mind,  and  especially  their  natural  gayety 
are  sufficient  for  this.  .  .  .  Every  age  in  life,  and 
especially  the  age  of  infancy,  desires  to  create,  to 
imitate,  to  produce,  to  manifest  power  and  activity." 
These  quotations  might  be  multiplied  many 
times,  and  it  might  be  shown  how  greatly  Rousseau 
delighted  in  studying  children  —  alas !  why  must  it 
be  added,  other  people's  children  ?  It  is  sad  to  see 
him  take  up  his  position  at  the  window  of  his  dreary 
house,  empty  through  his  own  fault,  to  watch  the 
children  coming  out  of  school  and  to  observe  by 
stealth  the  conversations,  games,  and  childish  actions 
of  the  little  scholars.  .  .  .  "  Never  did  a  man,  "says 


12  ROUSSEAU 

he  in  the  last  but  one  of  the  Reveries  d'un  promeneur 
solitaire,  "find  more  pleasure  than  myself  in  watch- 
ing youngsters  romp  and  play  together!"  And  he 
adds,  "If  I  have  made  some  progress  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  human  heart,  it  is  the  pleasure  that  I 
used  to  take  in  watching  and  observing  children 
which  has  earned  me  that  knowledge." 

How  much  more  accurate  would  Rousseau's 
psychology  have  been,  however,  if,  instead  of  a  fleet- 
ing attention  paid  to  a  few  street  Arabs,  whom  he 
watched  for  a  moment  at  their  frolics,  he  had  been 
able  to  exercise  the  attentive  observation  of  a  father 
who,  day  by  day,  watches  the  birth  and  develop- 
ment of  his  son's  mind. 

It  is,  moreover,  noteworthy  that  the  solicitude 
for  education  came  to  Rousseau  because  he  had 
criminally  abandoned  his  five  children,  as  though 
he  had  felt  himself  compelled  to  make  partial 
reparation  for  the  most  serious  of  all  his  moral 

i short  comings.  "The  ideas  with  which  my  fault  has 
filled  my  mind  have  contributed  to  turn  my  medi- 
tations to  the  subject  of  education.  .  .  ." 

Rousseau  was  also  deficient  in  professional  ex- 
perience of  instruction.  I  am  well  aware  that  to  the 
long  list  of  occupations  which  he  took  up  in  the 
course  of  his  vagrant  youth  and  Bohemian  existence, 
when  he  was  successively  engraver's  apprentice, 


ROUSSEAU  13 

recorder's  clerk,  clerk,  secretary,  music  copyist,  — • 
Grimm,  who  did  not  like  him,  once  advised  him 
to  sell  lemonade,  —  the  occupation  of  tutor  must  be 
added;  but  he  practised  it  so  little  and  so  ill !  ... 
In  1739  —  he  was  then  twenty-seven  —  Bonnot  de 
Mably,  royal  provost  at  Lyons,  confided  to  him  the 
education  of  his  two  sons.  At  first  he  applied  him- 
self to  this  task,  thinking  himself  fitted  for  it.  He 
was  soon  disabused,  however:  "I  did  no  thing  worth 
doing."  He  could  only  employ  three  methods  of 
discipline,  "always  useless  and  pernicious  with  chil- 
dren, " — sentiment^  argument,  and  anger.  Sentiment 
he  never  renounces,  as,  when  reproving  Emile  for  a 
fault,  the  tutor  will  only  say,  "My  boy,  you  have 
hurt  me!"  ...  Argument,  however,  he  excludes 
pitilessly  from  the  child's  instruction,  convinced 
henceforth,  contrary  to  Locke's  doctrine,  that  it  is 
not  advisable  to  argue  and  reason  too  early  with 
children,  "who,  though  they  may  be  reasoners,  are 
no  more  reasonable  for  that."  Quickly  finding  dis- 
tasteful a  profession  for  which  he  was  in  no  way 
suited,  Rousseau  resigned  it  at  the  end  of  a  year, 
but  not  before  he  had  drawn  up  for  M.  de  Sainte- 
Marie,  one  of  his  two  pupils,  an  educational  scheme 
in  which  neither  thought  nor  style  announce  the 
brilliant  and  profound  author  of  Emile. 
If  Rousseau  was  neither  an  assiduous  observer  of 


14  ROUSSEAU 

childhood  nor  a  professor  —  nor  even  a  pupil;  as  he 
never  studied  in  a  connected  manner,  and  was 
a  student  only  of  what  has  been  called  "the  Uni- 
versity of  Charmettes";  as  a  compensation  he  felt 
much  and  lived  much ;  and  for  the  formation  of  a 
powerful  mind,  a  regular  course  of  study  at  Plessis 
College  would  certainly  have  been  less  advanta- 
geous and  efficacious  than  that  agitated  existence 
which  led  Rousseau  into  all  grades  of  society,  into 
drawing-room  and  anteroom,  which  made  him  in 
succession  the  friend  of  philosophers  and  the  table 
companion  of  great  lords,  a  plebeian  on  good  terms 
with  the  people,  and  the  petted  favorite  of  great 
ladies,  countesses,  duchesses,  and  marchionesses. 

It  is  indisputable  that  Rousseau  put  much  of  his 
personality,  that  he  worked  many  reminiscences  of 
his  life  and  reflections  of  his  mind,  into  the  con- 
ception of  the  model  pupil  which  he  fashioned  for 
humanity.  Montaigne  said,  "I  am  the  substance  of 
my  book."  Is  this  so  with  Rousseau?  Could  he 
also  say,  as  Amiel  insinuates,  "My  system  and  my- 
self make  one"?  Did  he  conceive  Emile  in  his 
likeness  and  in  his  resemblance?  Amiel  claims 
that  he  weaves  nothing  but  his  own  substance  into 
his  most  magnificent  theories,  that  he  is  first  and 
foremost  a  " subjective.77  We  do  not  deny  this,  and 
we  are  aware  that  as  a  general  rule  educators  have 


ROUSSEAU  15 

a  natural  tendency  to  project  themselves,  as  it  were, 
into  the  plans  which  they  recommend  for  others' 
imitation.  When  Rousseau,  for  example,  sup- 
presses all  didactic  teaching  in  instruction,  what 
does  he  do  beyond  setting  up  as  a  rule  his  own 
experience?  "What  little  I  know,  I  learned  by 
myself.  I  could  never  learn  anything  from  a 
master.  .  .  ."  Rousseau  is  self-taught,  and  so  is 
Emile. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  on  how  many  other 
points  are  the  fancies  of  Emile's  education  in  formal 
opposition  with  the  realities  of  Rousseau's  existence  ? 
It  follows  naturally  that  people  satisfied  with  their 
destiny  recommend  to  others  what  they  have  found 
to  answer  in  their  own  case.  But  Rousseau  was  dis- 
satisfied with  himself  and  his  lot,  no  less  than  with 
society.  The  education  which  he  desired,  appears, 
as  a  consequence,  to  have  been  conceived  in  an  effort 
of  reaction  against  his  own  condition,  as  a  contrast 
to  the  imprudences  from  which  he  had  suffered,  and 
the  errors  or  faults  committed  by  him.  Poor 
stricken  mind  and  infirm,  diseased  body,  he  consoles 
himself  by  evoking  the  ideal  image  of  a  hardy  child, 
healthy  in  mind  and  body.  He  requites  himself  for 
his  wretchedness  and  imperfections  by  creating  a 
happy,  perfect  being. 

He  says,  for  example:  "As  yet  I  had  conceived 


16  ROUSSEAU 

nothing.  I  had  felt  everything."  Is  it  not  so  as 
to  escape  the  consequences  of  this  precocious  stimu- 
lation, which  had  made  him  morbidly  sensitive,  and 
demoralized  for  life,  that,  going  to  the  opposite 
extreme,  he  leaves  Emile  unacquainted  with  all 
sentimental  emotion  until  he  is  fifteen?  He  read 
to  excess;  before  he  was  ten  years  old  he  had  de- 
voured a  whole  library  of  novels.  Is  it  because  of 
this  that,  detesting  and  anathematizing  books,  he 
forbids  them  absolutely  to  Emile  ?  I  do  not  know, 
said  M.  Brunetiere,  one  of  our  great  writers  whose 
childhood  and  youth  were  to  such  a  degree  lacking 
in  guidance.  He  cannot,  indeed,  be  said  to  have 
had  a  family:  his  mother  died  in  giving  birth  to 
him;  his  father,  after  having  spoiled  him,  deserted 
him.  Nobody  brought  him  up.  .  .  .  How,  after 
that,  could  the  temptation  be  avoided  of  imagining 
a  situation  quite  the  reverse,  by  which  Emile  is  given 
a  tutor  who  does  not  lose  sight  of  him  for  a  second, 
a  mentor  who  will  accompany  and  protect  him  in  his 
every  action  right  up  to  the  threshold  of  the  nuptial 
chamber  ? 

In  evil  surroundings,  compromised  by  humiliating 
society,  Rousseau  was  conscious  of  all  the  dignity 
and  nobility  of  mind  that  he  had  lost  in  the  con- 
taminations of  his  existence:  then,  to  educate  a 
man  in  honor  and  virtue,  let  us  eliminate  all 


ROUSSEAU  17 

exterior  circumstances  which  may  sully  and  degrade 
him.  Emile  shall  live  alone,  far  from  mankind.  .  .  . 
Rousseau  lounged  in  servants'  hall  and  antechamber  ; 
he  took  part  in  the  distractions  of  fashionable  life ; 
he  frequented  the  drawing-rooms  of  Paris,  and  now 
and  again  allowed  himself  to  be  seduced  by  society's 
artifices;  he  contracted  numerous  frivolous  love 
intrigues.  None  of  these  things  for  the  ideal  man : 
the  country,  fresh  air,  outdoor  life  with  its  simplicity, 
a  pure  love,  single  and  deep,  nothing  but  nature.  .  .  . 
"Farewell,  Paris,  city  of  noise,  smoke,  and  mud, 
where  woman  no  longer  believes  in  purity  nor  man 
in  virtue !  Farewell,  Paris,  our  quest  is  love,  happi- 
ness, and  innocence;  never  shall  we  be  sufficiently 
remote  from  thee !  .  .  ." 

Much  of  $mile  is,  then,  a  visionary  structure 
erected  expressly  to  make  a  contrast  to  Rousseau's 
actual  life.  To  excuse,  or  at  least  explain,  the  gener- 

r 

ation  of  all  the  wild  delusions  of  Emile,  let  us  never 
lose  sight  of  the  inward  struggle  which  took  place 
in  its  author's  heart  between  what  was  noble  in 
his  aspirations  and  base  in  his  existence :  the  strik- 
ing incongruity  between  the  adoration  which  he 
professed  for  the  ideal  and  the  pitiful  reality  of  the 
circumstances  in  which  he  was  placed  and  for  which 
he  was  in  part  responsible.  This  man,  of  whom 
Grimm  said  that  "he  had  nearly  always  been  miser- 


18  ROUSSEAU 

able,"  bruised  by  the  strangest  adventures,  weighed 
down  by  physical  sickness,  and  who  felt  that  he  was 
dying  whilst  engaged  in  composing  femile;  still  more 
disturbed  by  imaginary  ills  which  an  anxious  mind 
invented  for  him ;  embittered  by  that  kind  of  mania 
of  persecution  which  from  year  to  year  was  to  in- 
crease and  was  finally  to  drive  him  to  suicide ;  exas- 
perated against  a  state  of  society  with  whose  vices 
he  was  the  better  acquainted  through  having  par- 
ticipated in  them;  humiliated  by  the  remembrance 
of  what  he  called  his  youthful "  rascalities  " ;  ashamed 
later  of  his  cohabitation  with  an  inn  servant  whose 
vulgarity  must  more  than  once  have  been  a  heavy 
burden  to  him :  he  felt  the  need  of  throwing  himself 
back  upon  an  ideal  world,  there  to  seek  a  fleeting 
forgetfulness  of  his  moral  infirmities,  a. compensation 
for  his  misfortunes,  in  revenge  for  the  frailties  of  his 
character  and  the  gloom  of  his  destiny.  If  his  life 
was  often  a  painful  drama,  certain  parts  of  Emile 
shall  be  idyls  and  pastorals  of  real  poetic  charm. 
He  has  said  so:  "The  impossibility  of  attaining  to 
actual  beings  has  cast  me  into  the  land  of  delusions : 
I  have  made  myself  societies  of  perfect  creatures. 
..."  The  exaggerations  and  phantasies  to  which 
we  shall  have  to  direct  attention  in  Emile  will  often 
only  be  deliberate  inventions  which  did  not  at  all 
delude  their  inventor.  As  he  put  it  when  writing 


ROUSSEAU  19 

in  1763  to  the  prince  of  Wirtemberg  concerning  the 
scheme  of  education  which  he  had  addressed  to  him 
for  his  daughter  Sophie,  brought  up  in  conformity 
with  the  principles  of  Entile:  " These  are,  perhaps, 
only  the  hallucinations  of  a  delirious  man.  .  .  .  The 
comparison  of  what  is  with  what  should  be  has  given 
me  a  romantic  mind,  and  has  always  driven  me  far 
from  what  goes  on." 

What  Rousseau  would  fain  have  been  and  was 
not,  Emile  is  to  be,  or  at  least  that  is  Rousseau's 
desire. 


Ill 


"PARDON  me  my  paradoxes,  ordinary  reader/' 
exclaims  Rousseau  somewhere.  The  best  way  of 
pardoning  them  is  to  attempt  to  extract  the  core  of 
truth  which  they  contain.  Once  we  have  deprived 
the  essential  principles  of  his  system  of  the  violent 
form  in  which  this  conjurer  of  thought  was  pleased 
to  envelop  them,  it  remains  for  us  to  gather  together 
the  general  rules,  the  characteristic  positive  and  un- 
questioned truths  in  Emile  which  modern  education 
will  never  relinquish. 

"Man  is  born  free  and  everywhere  he  is  fettered," 
thus  begins  Contrat  social. 

"Man  is  born  good  and  everywhere  he  has  become 
corrupt/7  such  is  the  sense  of  the  preamble  to  Emile. 

Rousseau  delights  in  these  absolute  statements: 
he  likes  concise,  peremptory  formulas  which  compel 
attention. 

To  his  political  sophism,  "The  universal  will  of 
the  people  is  always  right/'  corresponds  his  psy- 
chological sophism,  "Nature  is  fundamentally 
good." 

20 


ROUSSEAU  21 

Such  is  the  initial  error  which  gives  rise  to  all 
that  is  false  in  Emile.  The  bitterest  and  most  in- 
cisive of  pessimists  when  judging  actual  society, 
Rousseau  is  the  most  indulgent  of  optimists  when 
he  considers,  beyond  the  work  of  man,  the  work  of 
Providence,  that  is  to  say,  nature. 

Nature  is  good  and  beneficent.  Her  creatures 
are  pure,  so  long  as  they  have  not  been  perverted, 
corrupted,  disfigured,  and  sophisticated  by  a  pre- 
tended civilization  which  is  merely  a  long  decadence. 
On  this  point,  Rousseau  was  in  agreement  with  a 
number  of  his  contemporaries.  D'Holbach  said, 
"Man  is  vicious  because  he  has  been  made  so"; 
and  Diderot,  "A  natural  man  used  to  exist;  into 
this  natural  man  an  artificial  man  has  been  intro- 
duced." Rousseau  comes  back  insistently  to  the 
same  doctrine.  "Let  us  lay  down  as  an  incon- 
testable maxim  that  the  first  movements  of  nature 
are  always  right,  and  that  there  is  no  original  per- 
versity in  man's  heart.  ...  All  characters  are 
good  and  healthy  in  themselves.  .  .  .  There  is  no 
error  in  nature.  ..." 

Doubtless  it  would  be  within  one's  right  to  stop 
Rousseau  at  once  and  ask  him  to  explain  this 
flagrant  contradiction:  man  is  naturally  good,  and 
society,  man's  work,  is  bad.  .  .  .  But  he  is  not 
disturbed  by  this  incongruity.  Faithful  to  the 


22  ROUSSEAU 

opinion  which  he  had  expressed  in  the  two  Discours 
which  began  his  reputation,  he  clings  tenaciously  to 
his  Utopia.  He  repeats  in  every  form  that,  with  its 
customs  and  prejudices,  society  is  detestable  and 
perverted,  that  it  must  be  thoroughly  reformed. 
Let  us  revive  nature's  authority  and  substitute  it 
for  the  rule  of  ancient  and  antiquated  tradition ;  let 
us  supersede  the  empire  of  stern  discipline  and  op- 
pressive restriction,  which  mutilate  and  deform  the 
human  faculties,  by  the  reign  of  young  liberty,  which 
will  assist  in  their  expansion. 

By  such  a  challenge  hurled  at  every  human  in- 
stitution, Rousseau  had  in  view  more  than  a  simple 
pedagogical  reformation :  he  was  announcing  a  social 
revolution.  Authentically  he  is  the  father  of  the 
revolutionists  whose  idol  he  was  to  become :  let  us 
not  forget  that  Marat,  in  1788,  read  Contrat  social 
to  the  cheers  of  an  enthusiastic  audience. 

From  the  educational  point  of  view,  the  principle 
laid  down  by  Rousseau  has  for  consequence  the 
necessity  of  reconstructing  natural  man,  "original" 
man  according  to  the  expression  of  which  he  had 
already  made  use  in  his  Discours  sur  Vinegalite 
parmi  les  hommes,  man  as  he  was  in  the  primitive 
scheme  of  nature  and  Providence  —  for  in  Rousseau's 
religious  mind,  behind  nature  is  Providence,  who  is 
the  keystone  of  his  philosophical  doctrine  —  man, 


ROUSSEAU  23 

in  short,  as  he  would  be,  if  social  life  and  its  long 
corruption  had  not  perverted  him,  natural  man,  in 
a  word,  and  not  " human  man." 

Let  us  not  stop  to  demonstrate  that  Rousseau  is 
in  error,  that  there  are  in  nature  germs  for  evil  as 
well  as  good,  and  that  education  is  consequently 
something  more  than  a  complaisant  auxiliary,  that 
it  should  be  a  resistive  force  which  corrects  and 
compensates.  Let  us  rather  bear  in  mind  that  the 
contrary  opinion,  which  also  was  absolute,  that  of  a 
nature  essentially  bad,  vitiated  in  its  origin,  and  pre- 
destined exclusively  to  evil  had  long  prevailed  and 
still  held  sovereign  sway.  And  from  this  radical 
condemnation  of  humanity  proceeded  a  strict  and 
rigid  education,  made  up  chiefly  of  repression, 
bristling  with  prohibition  and  chastisement,  which 
conceded  nothing  to  the  child's  native  liberty.  Trial 
had  been  made  of  all  disciplinary  instruments  save 
one,  precisely  the  one  which  alone  could  succeed,  — 
well  regulated  liberty.  Rousseau  arises,  and  with 
eclat  he  opposes  the  conception  of  the  old  fallen 
Adam  whose  fated  inheritance  must  be  eradicated 
from  every  man  by  the  contrary  doctrine  of  a  hu- 
manity instinctively  impelled  to  good  and,  accord- 
ingly, destined  to  develop  in  full  liberty.  The  con- 
tradictory movements  of  the  ideas  which  appear  in 
succession  on  the  theatre  of  human  opinion  recall 


24  ROUSSEAU 

in  some  degree  those  comedies  in  which  a  speaker 
primed  with  one  side  of  a  question  is  answered  by 
another,  who  goes  to  the  opposite  extreme,  the  better 
to  display  the  conflict  of  sentiments.  Both  the  one 
and  the  other  are  wrong,  but  the  collision  of  opposite 
opinions  will  cause  the  truth  which  lies  between  to 
stand  out.  Even  at  the  risk  of  straining  his  voice 
and  exaggerating  his  repartee,  it  was  good  that  an 
eloquent  thinker,  in  reply  to  those  who  for  two 
thousand  years  had  repeated  the  lament  of  de- 
generate mankind,  should  testify  to  his  confidence 
and  happy  faith  in  the  natural  powers  and  tendencies 
of  man :  thus,  thirty  years  before  the  French  Revo- 
lution promulgated  the  Declaration  des  droits  de 
I'hommej  a  pedagogue  announced  the  declaration  of 
childhood's  rights,  of  its  right  to  an  education  of 
liberty.  "It  is  wrong,"  says  Rousseau,  "always  to 
speak  to  children  of  their  duties,  never  of  their 
rights."  Emile  was,  as  it  were,  the  charter  of  child- 
hood's freedom. 

Paradox  begets  paradox,  and  from  the  erroneous 
principle  which  serves  as  the  starting-point  of  Emile 
has  sprung  the  entire  series  of  pedagogical  falsities, 
for  which  Rousseau  has  been  so  severely  but  so 
justly  reproved,  what  Nisard  called  his  "enormi- 
ties," and  the  English  pedagogue,  R.  Hebert  Quick, 
"his  extravagances." 


ROUSSEAU  25 

The  first  of  these  capital  errors  is  that  education, 
at  any  rate  to  the  age  of  twelve,  should  be  strictly 
"negative."  "Positive"  education  will  only  begin 
for  Emile  after  a  long  intellectual  idleness  and  an 
equally  lengthy  moral  inaction.  Since  nature  tends 
of  itself  towards  its  ends,  she  should  be  left  alone. 
In  La  Nouvelle  Heloisej  Julie  was  already  of  opinion 
that  education  consists  "in  doing  nothing  at  all." 
The  best  educator  is  the  one  who  acts  least,  inter- 
vening only  to  remove  obstacles  which  would  hinder 
the  free  play  of  nature,  or  to  create  circumstances 
favorable  to  it. 

Education  is  to  be  doubly  negative :  in  discipline 
and  instruction  alike.  On  the  one  hand,  no  com- 
mands are  to  be  given  to  the  child;  on  the  other, 
he  is  to  be  taught  nothing. 

Hence,  no  moral  authority,  no  material  discipline 
in  the  child's  upbringing.  Neither  precepts  nor  chas- 
tisements, at  least  such  as  are  inflicted  by  human 
intention,  nor  rewards  of  any  kind.  No  punish- 
ments other  than  those  which  are  the  natural  re- 
sults of  the  action  and  the  consequences  of  the  fault 
committed.  It  is  the  principle  which  we  find  again 
in  Herbert  Spencer,  "Never  offer  to  the  indiscreet 
desires  of  a  child  any  other  obstacles  than  physical 
ones."  The  hand  of  man  is  to  be  nowhere  apparent. 
Emile  must  remain  alone  in  the  presence  of  nature 


26  ROUSSEAU 

and  her  might.  Knowledge  of  good  and  evil  is 
not  for  children.  .  .  .  The  inspiration  of  this  kind 
of  disciplinary  nihilism  was  perhaps  obtained  by 
Rousseau  from  his  personal  remembrances.  "He 
had  never  obeyed/7  says  Amiel.  "He  had  known 
neither  kindly  family  control  nor  firm  scholastic 
discipline.'7  Emile  does  not  know  what  obedience 
is,  nor  disobedience  either,  as  he  never  receives 
commands.  He  has  no  idea  that  a  human  will  other 
than  his  own  can  exist.  He  is  subjected  to  one  law 
only,  an  inflexible  oneyliowever,  that  of  the  possible 
and  the  impossible.  He  knows  no  other  authority 
than  that  of  nature's  laws,  no  other  dependence  than 
that  of  the  imperative  necessity  of  things. 
S  Would  it  serve  any  useful  purpose  to  reply  to 
Rousseau,  to  point  out  to  him  that  he  is  in  error, 
that  there  is  indeed  nothing  more  artificial  and  con- 
trary to  nature  than  this  so-called  natural  education, 
in  which  is  suppressed  the  most  natural  thing  in  the 
world,  —  the  authority  of  parents  and  masters  ? 
What?  No  longer  could  anything  be  expected  in 
the  direction  of  a  child's  conduct  from  either  the 
tender  insinuations  of  a  mother's  affection,  or  the 
injunctions  of  a  father's  strong  will,  at  once  gentle 
and  firm,  or  the  persuasive  exhortations  of  a  kindly 
and  watchful  master?  It  may  be  wise  to  exclude 
from  discipline  the  caprices  of  maladroit  parents  who 


ROUSSEAU  27 

command  and  countermand,  who  go  from  the  ex- 
treme of  blind  complacency  to  that  of  brutal  severity ; 
but  what  folly  it  would  be  to  reject  the  benefits  to 
the  moral  education  of  a  child  permitted  by  the 
action  of  authority  exercised  with  prudence  and 
wisdom.  Prevent  the  birth  of  vice,  and  you  will 
have  done  enough  for  virtue,  protests  Rousseau. 
Just  as  he  says  a  little  later,  Prevent  error  and 
prejudice  from  obtaining  entrance  into  Emile's  mind, 
and  you  will  have  done  enough  for  knowledge.  No, 
prevention  of  evil  is  not  sufficient:  it  is  necessary 
to  teach  good.  If  Emile's  intellect  lies  fallow  for 
twelve  years,  it  will  be  like  those  fields  which  the 
husbandman  does  not  till  or  sow :  weeds  will  spring 
up  in  alarming  abundance ;  and  when  their  destruc- 
tion is  desired,  it  will  be  too  late.  Rousseau  was 
better  inspired  in  La  Nouvelle  Heloise,  in  which  he 
said:  "A.  good  nature  should  be  cultivated.  .  .  . 
Children  must  be  taught  to  obey  their  mother." 

In  the  study  which  he  has  devoted  to  Emikj  and 
which  is  the  best  we  know,  John  Morley  remarks 
with  reason  that  omission  of  the  principle  of  authority 
is  the  fundamental  weakness  of  Rousseau's  system. 
In  this  system,  says  he,  in  effect,  the  child  is  always 
to  suppose  that  it  is  following  its  own  judgment  or 
impulses.  ...  It  must  not  feel  the  constraint  of 
a  will  other  than  its  own.  The  parent  and  the 


28  ROUSSEAU 

master  must  not  intervene ;  ...  as  though  parents 
were  not  a  part  of  nature?  .  .  .  And,  moreover, 
why  are  the  effects  of  conduct  upon  the  actor's  own 
physical  well-being  to  be  the  only  effects  honored 
with  the  title  of  being  natural,  neglecting  the  feel- 
ings of  approbation  or  disapproval  which  this  same 
conduct  inspires?  One  of  the  most  important  of 
educating  influences  is  lost  if  the  young  are  not 
taught  to  place  the  feelings  of  others  in  a  front 
place.  The  acquirement  of  many  excellent  qualities 
is  threatened  if  a  child,  in  its  ignorance  and  frailty,  is 
not  inclined  naturally  to  respect,  in  its  parents  and 
masters,  a  better-informed  authority  and  an  expe- 
rience riper  than  its  own. 

No  less  serious  is  the  error  in  respect  of  the  other 
aspect  of  negative  education,  —  the  adjournment  of 
instruction.  Here  Rousseau  becomes  enthusiastic, 
and  he  impressively  eulogizes  the  supposed  benefits 
of  the  long  mental  idleness  which  he  imposes  on  his 
pupil.  "May  I  venture  to  state  the  greatest,  the 
most  important,  the  most  useful  rule  in  all  education  ? 
it  is,  not  to  gain  time,  but  to  lose  it.  ...  Reading 
is  the  scourge  of  childhood.  .  .  .  Apparent  facility 
in  learning  is  the  ruin  of  children.  ...  I  teach  the 
art  of  being  ignorant.  .  .  ."  No  books,  then,  no 
verbal  lesson,  fimile  will  grow  up  like  a  little 
savage,  without  intellectual  culture,  exercising  only 


ROUSSEAU  29 

his  body  and  his  senses.  The  ideal  is  for  him  to 
remain  ignorant  as  long  as  possible,  to  reach  the 
age  of  twelve  not  even  knowing  "how  to  distinguish 
his  right  hand  from  his  left  ."  Rousseau,  who  goes 
into  ecstasies  in  face  of  his  workdays,  with  humorous 
exaggeration,  "I  would  as  soon  require  a  child  of 
ten  to  be  five  feet  tall  as  to  be  judicious ;"  .  .  .  and 
again,  "timile  would  not  hesitate  to  give  the  whole 
Academie  des  sciences"  —  supposing  that  he  is 
aware  of  its  existence — "for  a  pastry-cook's  shop." 
Undoubtedly,  not  everything  is  blameworthy  in 
the  inactive,  expectant  education  which  Rousseau 
recommends.  Let  us  retain  this  much  of  it,  that  it 
is  well  not  to  be  in  haste,  not  to  outdistance  the 
progress  natural  to  the  age  j  that  it  is  imprudent  and 
dangerous  to  weary  a  child  with  a  precocious  and 
premature  education;  that  one  risks  exhausting  its 
powers  by  fatiguing  them  too  soon.  But  what  a 
number  of  arguments  array  themselves  against  the 
system  which,  by  a  contrary  abuse,  leaves  the  in- 
tellectual faculties  uncultured  during  the  first  twelve 
years,  perhaps  the  most  fruitful  of  one's  whole  life ! 
Rousseau  himself  points  out  an  objection  that  might 
well  be  final :  it  is  that  the  mind,  so  long  enervated 
by  inaction,  will  become  incapable  of  action,  and 
"will  be  absorbed  by  matter."  How  can  it  be  hoped 
that  Emile,  who  has  studied  nothing,  will  all  at 


30  ROUSSEAU 

once  have  the  desire  and  ability  to  learn  everything, 
that  his  dormant  thought  will  spring  into  wakeful- 
ness  at  the  magic  summons  of  his  tutor,  to  acquire 
as  by  enchantment  all  the  attainments  in  which  he 
is  deficient  ?  And  especially,  how  can  the  versatility 
and  flexibility  of  the  intellectual  organs  required  by 
every  study  be  assured  him  in  a  short  time,  when 
their  preparation  by  continued  exercise  and  slow 
initiation  has  been  neglected  ?  Finally,  if  Rousseau's 
statement  were  true,  if  the  child  were  incapable  of 
all  abstract  study,  if  it  were  necessary  to  prohibit 
all  mental  work  for  it  till  the  age  of  twelve,  can  the 
result  be  imagined  ?  It  would  be  necessary  to  close 
all  elementary  schools,  and  the  instruction  of  the 
people  would  be  impossible. 

I  am  well  aware  that  Rousseau,  as  a  substitute 
for  books  and  formal  lessons,  appeals  to  nature's 
teachings,  fimile  has  learned  nothing  by  heart ;  he 
scarcely  knows  what  a  book  is.  To  make  up  for 
this,  he  knows  much  from  experience;  "he  reads  in 
nature's  book."  First,  let  us  point  out  that  nature 
does  not  consent  to  play  the  part  of  schoolmistress, 
with  which  Rousseau  wishes  to  saddle  her,  to  such 
an  extent.  ^The  proof  of  this  is  that  he  is  himself 
forced  to  resort  to  artifices,  to  the  most  complicated 
stratagems,  to  inculcate  into  his  pupil  the  rare  gleams 
of  knowledge  which  lighten  the  darkness  of  his 


ROUSSEAU  31 

ignorance.  Nature  needs  a  stage  carpenter  to 
prepare  the  laboriously  arranged  scenes  in  which 
an  attempt  is  made  to  provide  fimile  with  an  equiva- 
lent for  the  lessons  of  everyday  education.  t  Such  is 
the  juggler  episode,  intended  to  reveal  to  him  some 
notions  of  elementary  physics ;  such  is  the  conver- 
sation with  Robert  the  gardener  on  the  origin 
of  property.  Doubtless,  Emile  will  know  more 
thoroughly  the  few  little  things  thus  learned  by 
himself.  But  not  only  will  his  instruction  be 
singularly  limited,  this  teaching  from  experience 
and  nature  will  also  be  very  slow.  It  will  take  him 
months  and  years  to  discover  what  he  might  just 
as  well  have  learned  in  a  few  hours,  by  means  of 
well-arranged  lessons  or  well-chosen  reading.  Is, 
then,  everything  that  the  clear  diction  of  a  professor 
can  put  within  the  reach  of  the  smallest  scholar,  all 
the  light  that  books  can  bring  to  the  dawning  intel- 
ligence, to  be  useless?  And  is  it  to  benefit  fimile 
nothing  that  he  is  heir  to  a  long  line  of  generations 
who  have  worked,  thought,  and  written,  although 
that  effort  of  centuries  has  accumulated  treasuries 
of  truths  upon  which  newcomers  need  only  draw 
in  order  to  derive  instruction? 

It  is  sufficient,  moreover,  to  condemn  a  system 
which  would  result  in  nothing  less  than  the  sup- 
pression of  all  moral  discipline  and  all  didactic 


32  ROUSSEAU 

teaching  during  the  first  period  of  life,  that  Rous- 
seau, to  apply  it,  is  obliged  to  place  his  pupil  in  an  ab- 
normal situation,  to  set  him  free  from  the  ordinary 
conditions  of  existence,  to  isolate  him  in  a  kind  of 
exile,  to  withdraw  him  from  his  parents'  control  in 
order  to  confide  him  to  a  stranger's  keeping.  Aston- 
ishment has  been  expressed  that  Rousseau,  a  sincere 
friend  and  an  apostle  of  family  life,  — we  shall  soon 
be  convinced  of  that,  —  suppressed  parents,  brothers, 
and  sisters  in  his  educational  novel.  Where  are  the 
exquisite  pictures  which  he  had  outlined  in  La 
Nouvelle  Heloise  of  the  games  and  education  mutu- 
ally shared  by  Julie's  children  brought  up  under 
their  mother's  eyes  ?  If  Rousseau  is  recanting,  it  is 
because  he  was  forced  into  doing  so  by  the  necessity 
of  giving  an  appearance  of  practical  achievement  to 
his  dream  of  negative  education.  How,  indeed,  can 
one  suppose  that  a  father  and  mother  are  capable 
of  holding  sufficiently  aloof  from  the  education  of  a 
son  reared  by  themselves,  to  keep  from  influencing 
him  by  admonitions,  severe  at  need,  or  by  affectionate 
caresses  ?  It  was  absolutely  necessary  that  the  hero 
of  natural  education  should  live  alone  in  his  child- 
hood, without  either  parents,  comrades,  God,  or 

master.  —  for  God  is  not  mentioned  to  him  till  much 
' 

later,  when  he  is  eighteen;  and  as  for  the  tutor  who 
bears  him  company  he  is,  properly  speaking,  neither 


ROUSSEAU  33 

master  nor  professor:  he  is  simply  a  guardian,  a 
vigilant  sentinel,  whose  orders  are  to  protect  fCmile 
against  influences  from  without,  against  everything 
which  could  hinder  nature's  beneficent  action,  and 
whose  part  is  restricted  to  forming  around  his  pupil, 
as  it  were,  an  isolating  wall. 

This  strange  isolation  of  a  child  to  whom  all  inter- 
course with  the  rest  of  the  human  species  is  for- 
bidden is,  then,  only  a  fanciful  fabrication  which 
Rousseau  required  in  order  to  throw  into  clear  relief 
the  novelties  of  his  plan.  We  see  little  more  in  it 
than  a  trick  of  composition,  and  it  would  conse- 
quently be  superfluous  to  indulge  in  irony  against  a 
fiction  which  the  author  disavows  in  many  passages 
of  his  book ;  a  fiction  the  absurd  improbability  of 
which  is  sufficient  to  demonstrate  that  he  never 
thought  of  making  it  the  universal  rule  of  educa- 
tion. "I  point  out  the  goal  to  make  for:  I  do  not 
say  that  it  can  be  reached."  How  suppose  that 
Rousseau  seriously  thought  it  possible  to  realize  a 
system  the  least  defect  of  which  would  be  that  it 
suppress  every  other  function  than  the  tutor's,  since 
half  mankind  would  be  kept  employed  as  educators 
for  twenty  years,  and  as  Mme.  de  Stael  said,  "  Grand- 
fathers at  most  would  be  free  to  begin  a  personal 
career  "  ?  A  mentor,  indeed,  would  have  to  be  found 
for  every  Telemachus ;  that  is,  for  every  child  to  be 


34  ROUSSEAU 

educated.  The  Christian  faith,  in  its  fervors,  in- 
spired the  "stylites, "  those  extravagant  anchorites 
who  passed  their  lives  on  the  summit  of  a  column, 
'twixt  earth  and  sky,  as  though  it  were  desired  in 
this  way  to  present  in  a  striking  and  absurd  form 
the  necessity  of  rupture  with  the  world.  Similarly, 
Rousseau's  naturalistic  faith  suggested  to  him  the 
invention  of  an  exceptional  being  who  is  to  live  and 
grow  up  far  from  society,  by  a  sort  of  hypothesis 
whose  object  is  to  make  the  power  of  nature's  educa- 
tion evident.  It  is  unthinkable  that  Rousseau  should 
so  imperiously  call  upon  a  mother  to  suckle  her 
child,  only  to  carry  it  away  from  her  tenderness  and 
remove  it  from  her  care  as  soon  as  it  is  weaned.  No, 
he  merely  wished,  in  an  artificial  framework,  to  give 
free  rein  to  his  visions.  Emile  is  no  real  being :  he 
is  a  creature  of  reason,  as  it  were,  an  engine  of  war 
invented  to  combat  society. 

At  bottom,  as  will  be  seen  by  reference  to  other 
passages  of  Emile  and  to  Rousseau's  other  writings, 
domestic  education  never  had  a  more  fervent 
partisan. 

Often  in  his  Correspondence  does  he  return  to  the 
praise  of  family  life.  It  is  true  that  in  his  Conside- 
rations sur  le  gouvernement  de  Pologne,  dating  from 
1772,  he  has  altered  his  opinion  and,  by  a  fresh  con- 
tradiction, declares  himself  ardently  for  a  third  solu- 


ROUSSEAU  35 

tion,  education  in  common.  Rousseau  is  a  man  of 
successive  impulses,  each  in  turn  defended  with  the 
same  impetuosity.  To  the  Poles  he  resolutely 
advises  national  education  pushed  to  its  last 
extreme,  the  teachings  of  the  Republic  of  Plato, 
which  absorbs  the  man  into  the  citizen,  and  con- 
fiscates the  individual  to  hand  him  bodily  to  the 
State.  Rousseau  was  divided  all  his  life  between 
the  doctrine  of  individualism  and  that  of  socialism, 
between  State  sovereignty  and  man's  liberty. 

He  says:  "The  good  social  institutions  are  those 
which  can  best  change  man's  nature,  remove  his 
absolute  existence  to  replace  it  by  a  quite  relative 
one.  ...  It  is  by  public  education  that  minds  are 
given  a  national  form.  .  .  .  Public  education,  on 
lines  prescribed  by  the  government,  is  one  of  the 
fundamental  maxims  of  all  popular  government. 
.  .  ."  And  again,  in  the  Encyclopaedia  article  on 
Political  Economy,  "As  each  man's  reason  is  not 
left  sole  arbiter  of  his  duties,  so  much  the  less  should 
children's  education  be  left  to  the  opinions  and 
prejudices  of  fathers.  .  .  ." 

This  is  far  removed  from  Emile's  individualistic 
education,  and  we  willingly  admit  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  push  unconscious  freedom  in  the  mutability 
of  conflicting  opinions  and  impetuous  contradictions 
farther  than  Rousseau  does.  And  yet,  in  spite  of 


36  ROUSSEAU 

all,  we  maintain  that,  viewing  his  aspirations  as  a 
whole,  Rousseau  is  in  favor  of  domestic  educa- 
tion. Let  us  first  read  that  fine  page  of  Emile,  in 
which  he  claims  that  a  girl  should  be  brought  up 
by  her  mother,  and  vigorously  refutes  the  chimeras 
of  platonic  education.  He  protests  "  against  that 
civil  promiscuity  which  mixes  both  sexes  in  the  same 
employments,  in  the  same  labors,  and  which  cannot 
but  give  rise  to  the  most  intolerable  abuses, — against 
that  subversion  of  the  gentlest  sentiments  of  nature 
sacrificed  to  an  artificial  sentiment  which  owes  its 
existence  to  them,  —  as  though  it  were  not  necessary 
to  have  a  natural  hold  to  form  conventional  ties;  as 
though  love  of  kindred  were  not  the  principle  of 
that  which  is  due  to  the  State ;  as  though  it  were 
not  through  the  little  fatherland,  which  is  the 
family,  that  the  heart  is  attached  to  the  larger  one ; 
as  though  it  were  not  the  good  son,  the  good  father, 
and  the  good  husband,  who  make  the  good  citi- 
zens. .  .  ." 

At  the  great  word  " family"  Rousseau's  imagina- 
tion takes  fire,  so  much  the  more,  perhaps,  as  he 
himself  neither  knew  its  joys  nor  performed  its 
obligations.  Talk  not  to  him  either  of  colleges  for 
boys  or  of  convents  for  girls !  Colleges  he  dismisses 
in  a  word  as  " laughable  establishments,"  — and  it  is 
because  he  had  spoken  of  them  in  this  disdainful 


ROUSSEAU  37 

way  that  he  thought,  according  to  what  he  recounts 
in  the  Confessions,  that  he  had  drawn  upon  himself 
the  hatred  of  the  Jesuits,  of  whom,  from  prudence, 
he  had  made  it  a  rule  "  never  to  speak,  either  well 
or  ill."  As  for  convents,  because  they  do  not  exist 
in  Protestant  nations,  he  considered  the  latter  supe- 
rior to  Catholic  nations. 

In  La  Nouvelle  Heloise,  Rousseau  sharply  repri- 
mands parents  who  put  their  children  into  the  hands 
of  strange  masters,  "as  though  a  tutor  could  re- 
place a  father.  .  .  ."  Elsewhere,  in  his  letters  to 
the  prince  of  Wurtemberg,  he  writes:  "There  is  no 
paternal  eye  but  a  father's,  and  no  maternal  eye  but 
a  mother's.  I  should  like  to  devote  twenty  reams 
of  paper  to  repeating  those  two  lines  to  you,  so 
much  am  I  convinced  that  everything  depends  on 
them.  .  .  ." 

Besides  this,  it  is  known  with  what  eloquence, 
in  Emile  itself,  Rousseau  recalled  mothers  to  their 
duty,  as  far  as  nursing  is  concerned.  Undoubtedly 
he  is  not  the  first  who  did  so.  In  Rome  itself,  in 
the  second  century,  the  philosopher  Favorinus  said, 
"Is  it  not  being  only  half  a  mother  to  confide  one's 
children  to  paid  nurses?  ..."  Words  of  kindness, 
in  agreeable  contrast  with  the  harsh  manners  and 
severity  of  a  society,  one  of  whose  most  illustrious 
representatives,  Cicero,  wrote  a  century  earlier, 


38  ROUSSEAU 

in  his  Tusculanes,  "When  a  child  dies  young,  con- 
solation is  easily  found;  when  it  dies  in  the  cradle, 
it  is  not  even  a  matter  for  concern.  .  .  ." 

In  the  years  which  preceded  the  publication  of 
EmiUj  doctors  and  moralists  had  undertaken  the 
same  campaign,  but  they  had  carried  it  on  without 
vigor.  Rousseau  put  his  whole  heart  into  it, 
and  as  Mme.  de  Genlis  said,  "Wisdom  is  less  per- 
suasive than  enthusiasm.  Rousseau  repeated  what 
others  had  said;  but  he  did  not  advise:  he  com- 
manded and  was  obeyed." 

In  bringing  the  mothers  back  to  the  cradles,  Rous- 
seau was  not  solely  concerned  with  the  child's  in- 
terest and  its  physical  needs.  "If  he  demanded  the 
nurse's  milk,  it  was  to  have  the  mother's  affection." 

In  his  eyes,  the  child  is,  as  it  were,  the  bearer  of  the 
family  virtues,  the  pledge  and  at  the  same  time  the 
guarantee  of  conjugal  love.  It  is  the  sacred  bond 
which  indissolubly  unites  husband  and  wife.  It  is 
the  child  which  sustains  and  rekindles  the  domestic 
hearth,  by  the  joy  which  its  winning  presence  brings 
to  it,  as  by  the  common  duties  which  its  education 
imposes.  In  the  appeal  which  Rousseau  addresses 
to  parents,  the  father  is  no  more  forgotten  than  the 
mother.  After  saying :  "Would  you  recall  every  one 
to  his  highest  duties?  Begin  with  the  mothers,"  he 
adds:  "As  the  mother  is  the  true  nurse,  the  father 


ROUSSEAU  39 

is  the  true  teacher.  .  .  .  The  father  will  make 
excuses :  business,  he  will  say,  duties.  .  .  .  Doubt- 
less, the  least  important  is  to  be  a  father !  .  .  ." 

But  let  us  return  to  Rousseau's  chimeras,  to  what 
he  himself  described  in  his  Preface  as  the  "  dreams 
of  a  visionary, "  without  giving  up  the  idea  of 
seeking  and  finding  in  them  some  grains  of  truth. 
To  the  illusion  of  negative  education  is  attached  that 
of  " successive"  education.  Here  Rousseau  is  going 
to  contradict  his  essential  principle,  which  is  to 
follow  nature.  If  there  be,  indeed,  a  fixed  law  of 
nature,  it  is  that  she  creates  nothing  abruptly,  but 
always  proceeds  by  slow,  imperceptible  evolution. 
"With  her,"  says  Mme.  Necker  de  Saussure,  "one 
can  nowhere  lay  hold  on  a  beginning ;  she  is  not  to 
be  surprised  in  the  act  of  creation,  and  it  seems  that 
she  is  forever  developing."  From  this  very  accurate 
conception  has  issued  the  fine  system  of  "  progressive 
education."  But  Rousseau  imagined  another  thing : 
a  fragmentary,  seriate  education,  divided  into  three 
periods.  He  forgets  that  nature  makes  the  several 
functions  of  a  human  creature  advance  abreast  in 
their  development,  and  that  education  should  ac- 
cordingly conform  to  this  simultaneous  evolution 
of  the  various  bodily  and  mental  faculties.  Quite 
otherwise,  he  shatters  the  true  unity  of  the  human 
being.  "It  is,"  says  Mme.  d'Epinay,  "as  though 


40  ROUSSEAU 

children  were  forbidden  to  move  their  arms  and  use 
their  hands  whilst  learning  to  walk."  In  the  first 
place,  by  an  absolute  dualism,  Rousseau  disasso- 
ciates the  mind  from  the  body.  "  Nature  intended 
the  body  to  develop  before  the  mind.'7  But  of  the 
mind  itself,  instead  of  one,  he  makes  three.  In  the 
artificial  story  of  Emile,  there  are  three  phases, 
radically  distinct  and  separate  from  each  other. 
Until  twelve  years  old,  physical  life  and  sense 
exercise:  nothing  for  either  intelligence  or  heart. 
Emile,  at  the  age  of  twelve,  is  only  a  hardy  animal, 
an  agile  "roebuck."  ^  From  twelve  to  fifteen,  the 
intellectual  age,  the  very  short  period  of  study,  in 
which  the  child  is  rapidly  initiated  into  the  elements 
of  useful  knowledge,  is  no  longer  submitted  to  the 
necessary  power  of  the  natural  laws,  reflects  at  last, 
and  decides  in  accordance  with  a  fresh  principle, 
the  idea  of  utility.  Lastly,  —  third  period,  —  after 
the  age  of  fifteen,  sentiment  and  duty  make  their 
long-delayed  appearance,  "We  enter  upon  the 
moral  order."  Abruptly,  the  social  formation  of 
the  man  comes  under  consideration. 

Such  is  Rousseau's  bizarre  programme:  thus  he 
establishes  three  superposed  divisions  of  education, 
three  stages ;  and  one  may  ask  how,  after  this  arti- 
ficial distribution  of  the  individual,  the  three  sections 
of  the  human  person  can  join  together  again,  and 


ROUSSEAU  41 

combine  to  reconstitute  the  natural  entirety  formed 
by  the  body  and  the  mind. 

None  the  less,  there  is,  as  always,  a  proportion  of 
just,  true  observation  in  Rousseau's  arbitrary  theory. 
He  is  right  in  desiring  that  consideration  be  given 
to  the  characteristics  proper  to  each  age  of  life,  and 
that,  for  example,  a  child  be  treated,  not  as  a  man, 
but  as  a  child.  ' '  Treat  your  pupil  as  his  age  demands. 
The  wisest,"  says  he,  — and  he  evidently  intends  to 
refer  to  Locke,  —  "devote  themselves  to  what  a  man 
should  know,  without  considering  what  children 
are  able  to  learn.  They  always  seek  the  man  in  the 
child,  without  thinking  of  what  he  is  before  he  be- 
comes a  man."  And  again:  "Let  infancy  mature 
in  the  child.  We  have  often  heard  of  a  finished  man ; 
let  us  at  last  think  of  a  'finished  child/" 

On  this  point,  Rousseau  is  not  in  agreement  with 
some  of  our  modern  educators,  even  with  those  who 
draw  their  inspiration  most  from  him.  In  a  recent 
book,  which  is  extremely  interesting,  ^Education 
nouvelle,  M.  Demolins,  the  founder  of  the  school  of 
les  Roches,  the  innovator  who  with  praiseworthy 
zeal  is  striving  to  acclimatize  in  France  certain 
portions  of  the  manly,  free  English  education,  M. 
Demolins  formulates  a  contrary  opinion.  According 
to  him,  it  is  never  too  soon  to  treat  a  child  as  a  man. 
"Treated  as  men/'  says  he,  "children  actually  and 


42  ROUSSEAU 

speedily  become  men."  And  he  quotes  the  anec- 
dote of  a  child  of  nine,  who,  very  quickly  indeed,  — 
in  two  hours,  —  really  became  a  man,  simply  because, 
having  been  received  with  his  parents  by  an  English 
family,  the  three  members  of  this  family  took  him 
seriously  during  his  visit,  and  were  willing  to  talk 
with  him  the  whole  time !  .  .  . 

To  form  men,  to  "manufacture  "  them,  as  it  is  now 
expressed,  is  the  perpetual  dream  of  educators  of  all 
times  and  countries.  To  have  a  certain  measure 
of  success,  it  is  perhaps  desirable  to  adopt  a  course 
somewhere  between  the  two  extreme  opinions  of 
M.  Demolins  and  of  Rousseau.  On  the  one  hand, 
it  is  never  too  early  to  school  a  child  in  his  duty  and 
to  prepare  the  apprenticeship  of  personal  responsi- 
bility by  appealing  to  his  reason  and  reflection, 
and  Rousseau  errs  in  causing  the  delays  of  which 
we  know  to  this  education  of  reason.  On  the  other 
hand,  however,  —  and  here  Rousseau  triumphs,  — 
it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  child  is  a  child, 
and  that  he  cannot  be  required  to  exercise  judgment 
and  act  as  a  free  man  when  his  judgment  is  not 
formed  nor  his  liberty  created.  Our  two  peda- 
gogues, moreover,  are  at  bottom  more  in  agreement 
than  one  would  think.  They  neither  wish  for  a 
premature  instruction  which  throws  the  child  from 
the  beginning  into  abstract  studies,  and  according 


ROUSSEAU  43 

to  Goethe's  expressions,  tends  to  make  him  into  "a 
subtle  philosopher,  a  scholar,  and  not  a  man." 
M.  Demolins  certainly  would  indorse  this  conclu- 
sion of  Rousseau 's :  "The  ordinary  education  is  bad 
because  is  makes  old  children  and  young  professors." 
In  the  same  way,  as  regards  moral  education,  M. 
Demolins,  who  is  especially  opposed  to  discipline 
based  on  "the  principle  of  authority,"  cannot  but 
applaud  Rousseau's  exaggerations,  since  the  latter 
expressly  does  away  with  all  authority,  and  cen- 
sures parents  and  masters  who  have  never  early 
enough  "corrected,  reprimanded,  flattered,  threat- 
ened, promised,  instructed,  reasoned." 

Where  it  is  not  permissible  to  fall  in  with  Rous- 
seau's views  is  in  the  incomprehensible  delay  which 
he  imposes  on  moral  education.  This  is,  in  another 
manner,  more  pernicious  than  the  adjournment  of 
intellectual  culture.  Emile  has  attained  his  fifteenth 
year,  and  has  not  as  yet  felt  any  human  sentiment. 
Whom  does  he  love?  Nobody,  save  perhaps  his 
tutor,  the  only  man  whom  he  knows.  His  mind  has 
not  been  opened  to  any  of  those  infantile  affections 
which  prepare  the  social  virtues.  By  what  miracle 
will  he  suddenly  learn  to  love  mankind,  after  living 
so  long  in  the  cold,  sterile  isolation  of  a  strictly  indi- 
vidual life  ?  Rousseau,  truly,  is  too  summary  in  the 
recital  of  his  pedagogic  methods.  He  says, 


44  ROUSSEAU 

is  this;  Sophie  is  that."  He  endows  both  of  them 
with  all  kinds  of  marvellous  qualities  and  virtues; 
but  he  neglects  to  tell  us  how  they  have  been  ac- 
quired. Concerning  the  genesis  of  affectionate  sen- 
timent, it  is  evident  that  he  is  reckoning  on  a  mirac- 
ulous result  which  he  has  done  nothing  to  prepare. 
He  has  left  Emile's  heart  empty  for  fifteen  years,  and 
in  an  instant  he  thinks  that  he  can  fill  it.  What  a 
delusion!  Love  cannot  be  taught  like  calculation. 
The  formation  of  social  feeling  is  a  delicate  and 
difficult  matter.  Rousseau,  moreover,  complicates 
the  problem  by  submitting  Emile  to  the  laws  of 
egoism  alone.  As  Condillac,  by  a  series  of  subtle 
transformations,  derives  from  primal  sensation  the 
most  abstract  and  general  notions,  so  does  Rousseau 
pretend,  by  a  strange  metamorphosis,  to  obtain 
from  initial  egoism  alone  all  the  altruistic  sentiments. 
Self-respect  is,  in  his  eyes,  the  sole  and  fundamental 
atom  of  sensibility.  How  could  he  forget  that  other 
atom,  sympathy,  which  makes  itself  apparent  from 
the  dawn  of  life,  and  whose  development  cannot 
too  soon  be  encouraged  and  stimulated?  In  the 
smile  which  a  new-born  babe  directs  towards  the  one 
who  suckles  and  cares  for  it,  there  is  more  than  the 
expression  of  a  material  need  satisfied :  there  is  the 
instinctive  response  of  the  child  to  the  considerate 
tenderness  of  the  mother.  "So  long  as  the  child 


ROUSSEAU  45 

pays  attention  only  to  what  affects  his  senses, 
arrange  for  all  his  ideas  to  be  limited  to  sensations. 
.  .  ."  No,  on  the  contrary,  let  us  open  wide  the 
door  for  the  sentiments,  which  are,  indeed,  only  too 
ready  to  enter.  With  children,  it  is  necessary  at 
once  to  mingle  mind  with  body. 

It  is  known  that  Rousseau,  in  his  mania  for  post- 
ponement, delayed  until  adolescence  the  revelation 
of  religious  as  well  as  moral  ideas.  The  reason  which 
he  gives  is  that  a  child,  with  its  purely  emotional 
imagination  —  and  it  is  very  likely  the  fault  of  nega- 
tive education  if  this  be  the  case  —  could  only  form 
a  superstitious  idea  of  God,  and  would  picture  him 
as  a  human  being,  an  old  white-bearded  man,  a 
monarch  seated  on  a  throne.  .  .  .  Hence  the  pro- 
priety of  awaiting  the  age  of  reason  before  speaking 
of  God  to  Emile,  so  that  he  may  straightway  form  a 
conception  of  him  in  the  ideal  sublimity  of  his 
spiritual  attributes.  At  least,  if  he  has  deferred 
to  the  age  of  eighteen  the  revelation  of  the  Supreme 
Being,  Rousseau  makes  up  for  it  by  the  splendor 
in  which  he  invests  him.  He  was  a  deist  in  all 
sincerity.  He  believed  in  God  with  as  much  con- 
viction as  he  believed  in  the  soul  and  in  a  future  life : 
"I  desire  too  greatly  that  there  be  a  God,  not  to 
believe  in  him.  .  .  . "  Without  seeking  verification 
in  his  other  writings,  the  Profession  de  foi  du  vicaire 


46  ROUSSEAU 

Savoyard  demonstrates  it  in  a  striking  manner.  It 
was,  in  his  opinion,  the  principal  portion  of  Emile. 
For  it  he  would  have  sacrificed  all  the  rest.  It  was 
that  part  of  his  manuscript  that  he  intrusted  to  the 
keeping  of  his  surest  friends,  fearing,  in  the  perpetual 
apprehensions  which  the  printing  of  the  work  caused 
him,  that  his  enemies,  and  particularly  the  Jesuits, 
might  cause  it  to  disappear.  This  was  the  principal 
cause  of  the  wrath  and  tempest  of  persecution  which 
were  about  to  be  let  loose  against  him.  It  was  this, 
on  the  other  hand,  which  earned  him  the  enthu- 
siastic praise  and  even  the  admiration  of  Voltaire ; 
for  it  is  of  the  Profession  de  foi  that  Voltaire,  so  hard 
upon  'Emile ,  intended  to  speak,  when  he  says  that  this 
" stupid  novel"  contains,  however,  "fifty  pages  which 
deserve  to  be  bound  in  morocco."  At  a  distance, 
and  despite  a  superb  setting  and  a  magnificent  style, 
the  Profession  de  foi,  which  is  somewhat  of  a  digres- 
sion in  an  educational  treatise,  strikes  us  as  an 
emphatic  declamation  of  a  vague,  irresolute  spirit- 
ualism. Its  intrinsic  value  as  a  philosophical  work 
is,  however,  of  small  importance.  The  fault  we  find 
with  it  is  that  it  is  the  first  word  of  religion  which 
Rousseau  made  his  pupil  hear,  if  so  it  be  that  he 
really  wishes  to  develop  religious  feeling  in  him. 
That  Rousseau's  conception  cannot  be  realized  is 
indisputable:  if  Emile  lived,  like  all  children,  in  a 


ROUSSEAU  47 

family  and  in  the  world,  he  would  be  a  witness  of 
exterior  manifestations  of  religion  on  the  part  of  his 
parents  and  fellow-citizens,  and  in  his  curiosity 
he  would  speedily  ask  what  all  this  means :  to  hide 
God  from  him  would  be  impossible.  But  that  is  not 
the  question :  what  does  matter,  is  to  know  whether 
the  method  employed  by  Rousseau  responds  to  his 
intentions,  whether  it  is  of  a  nature  to  insure  their 
success.  I  should  think  it  excellent  rather  to  pro- 
duce atheists.  Will  not  Emile,  who  has  dispensed 
with  God  for  so  long,  be  tempted  to  dispense  with 
him  altogether,?  In  his  desire  to  communicate  to 
his  pupil  the  sentiment  of  religion  with  which  he  him- 
self was  so  thoroughly  imbued,  Rousseau  ought  to 
have  taken  thought  that  here  also  a  slow  develop- 
ment is  necessary,  that  Emile's  temporary  atheism 
is  in  great  danger  of  becoming  fixed,  quite  as  much 
as  his  egoism  or  his  intellectual  inertia. 

In  this,  as  in  many  another  particular,  Rousseau 
has  not  followed  his  principle,  which  is  to  obey  the 
laws  of  nature.  Borrowing  from  him  one  of  his 
metaphorical  methods  of  expression,  one  would  be 
tempted  to  imagine  that  "Nature,"  speaking,  would 
address  him  nearly  as  follows :  — 

"Truly,  0  Rousseau,  I  should  be  very  ungrateful, 
did  I  not  hail  you  as  one  of  the  mortals  who  have 
most  exerted  themselves  to  restore  my  dominion. 


48  ROUSSEAU 

You  have  avowed  yourself  my  faithful  servant. 
Your  incense  has  burned  on  my  altars.  You  have 
practised,  with  sincere  enthusiasm,  a  simple,  frugal 
life,  rustic  pleasures,  and  innocent  manners,  in  a 
society  given  up  to  luxurious  tastes,  to  vice,  and  the 
complications  of  worldly  life.  You  have  shown  the 
dawn  to  people  who  used  not  to  rise  till  noon.  You 
have  taken  into  the  open  air,  into  the  broad  sun- 
shine, little  children  who  were  fading  away  in  the 
vitiated  atmosphere  of  great  towns.  You  have  pro- 
tested against  unnatural  requirements  and  the 
caprice  and  artifice  of  fashion.  You  have  endeav- 
ored to  restore  to  humanity  the  simplicity  of  the 
primal  ages.  ...  All  praise  to  you  for  this. 

"But  on  how  many  points,  believing  your  in- 
spiration to  come  from  me  alone,  you  nevertheless 
have  erred?  I  have  no  proof  that  you  really  un- 
derstand my  nature.  Everybody  around  you  speaks 
'of  the  mystery  of  nature's  law/  Are  you  quite 
sure  that  you  have  thrown  light  upon  this  mystery 
and  penetrated  it  ? 

"What  am  I  in  your  eyes?  'The  sum  total,  you 
say,  of  humanity's  instinctive  tendencies  before 
falsified  by  opinion/  You  forget  that  'opinion' 
has  been  in  part  formed  by  me ;  that  society  is  my 
work,  that  I  founded  it,  and  count  for  much  in  its 
organization.  It  seems  that,  in  your  mind,  I  have 


ROUSSEAU  49 

remained,  congealing  in  my  immobility  the  wild, 
primitive  nature  of  the  world's  earliest  ages.  No, 
I  am  not  a  motionless,  invariable  force.  I  advance 
and  keep  abreast  of  progress.  Some  one  who  has  no 
liking  for  you,  but  who  has  much  wit,  said  humorously 
that  you  were  making  humanity  move  backwards 
to  the  barbarian  epoch  in  which  men  walked  on  all 
fours  and  ate  acorns.  ...  I  grant  you  that  Vol- 
taire exaggerates;  but  all  the  same,  by  vaunting 
the  benefits  of  ignorance,  by  execrating  arts  and 
letters  and  all  the  works  of  civilization,  have  you 
not  given  excuse  for  this  raillery  ? 

"  Heedlessly  you  ask  that  a  clean  sweep  be  made 
of  everything  that  your  ancestors  have  instituted, 
whereas  these  institutions  and  customs  have  often 
been  dictated  to  them  by  me.  You  wish,  in  edu- 
cation, to  take  in  everything  the  side  opposed  to 
custom,  but  do  you  not  see  that  '  custom/  which 
you  condemn  in  its  entirety,  could  not  have  lasted 
from  century  to  century,  if  it  had  not  agreed  in  part 
with  the  laws  over  which  I  preside  ? 

"I  do  not  wish  to  take  your  errors  in  detail,  but 
here  is  one.  You  rightly  teach  your  dear  Emile 
natural  religion  alone,  the  one  religion  which  I  can 
admit.  You  are  right,  acclaiming  behind  me 
Providence,  my  creator,  to  oppose  the  internal  and 
profound  sentiment  of  conscience  to  vain  and  super- 


50  ROUSSEAU 

stitious  forms  of  ritual.  .  .  .  But  why,  in  this  re- 
ligious education,  have  you  not  acted  in  conformity 
with  human  progress  itself,  which,  guided  by  me,  has 
advanced  from  primitive  superstition  and  the  feeble 
light  of  later  theology,  to  the  fuller  light  of  pure 
reason  ?  Your  predecessor,  Fenelon,  who  also  pleased 
me  greatly  by  the  effort  which  he  made  to  approach 
me  nearly,  was  wiser;  and  if  it  really  is  necessary 
that  men  remain  believers,  he  understood  that  the 
one  means  of  insuring  their  faith  was  to  lay  its 
foundations  early  in  the  child's  mind,  by  introducing 
to  him  at  first,  as  I  have  done  for  humanity,  per- 
ceptible ideas  of  God,  imperfect,  confused  notions, 
whose  superstitious  imageries  will  gradually  be  dis- 
sipated by  reason,  in  proportion  as  it  develops,  in 
order  to  exhibit,  as  far  as  human  frailty  permits, 
the  pure  and  rational  conception  of  Him  who  made 
me.  .  .  . 

"To  sum  up,  0  Rousseau,  your  great  error,  the 
principal  fault  with  which  you  will  be  reproached  in 
succeeding  centuries  —  for  I  foresee  the  future — is 
lack  of  belief  in  progress ;  failure  to  divine  the  great 
law  of  the  perpetual  evolution  of  things.  You  have 
missed  my  most  important  characteristic,  which  is 
ceaseless  motion.  The  word  ' progress7  comes 
often  from  your  pen,  but  you  always  find  it  evil. 
It  is  for  you,  or  nearly  so,  a  synonym  for  decadence 


ROUSSEAU  51 

and  corruption.  .  .  .  Your  successors,  on  the  con- 
trary, will  consider  progress  as  my  supreme  law, 
my  essential  principle,  as  the  reason  for  the  existence 
of  humanity  and  the  world.  They  will  understand 
that  nature  is  not  the  product  of  a  day,  that  the  suc- 
cessive acquisitions  of  inheritance  form  an  integral 
portion  of  my  substance. 

"Let  your  errors  be  forgiven  you,  however,  for 
you  have  loved  me  greatly.  Others  will  come  after 
you  who  will  also  think  that  they  have  defined  me. 
They  also  will,  perchance,  be  mistaken ;  for  I  am  not 
as  simple  as  may  be  thought ;  I  am  infinitely  complex, 
and  I  remain  the  impenetrable  enigma,  unfathom- 
able in  its  designs,  whose  solution  will  perhaps  never 
be  accomplished  by  man.  .  .  ." 


IV 

BY  his  visions,  even  those  which  were  in  contra- 
diction with  the  nature  whose  patronage  he  was 
invoking,  Rousseau  has  rendered  signal  service  to 
the  science  and  art  of  education.  "His  errors/7  said 
P.  Girard,  "are  themselves  wholesome  warnings." 
By  violently  shaking  traditionary  usages,  he  awoke 
minds  slumbering  in  routine,  and  by  his  flights  of 
fancy  he  suggested  and  prepared  just  and  practical 
solutions. 

But  Emile  contains  also,  and  in  large  number, 
general  views  and  detailed  facts  concerning  the 
various  branches  of  education  which  may  be  ac- 
cepted straightway  almost  without  revision.  These 
form,  as  it  were,  quite  a  cluster  of  flowers,  which  will 
blossom  eternally  in  the  garden  of  education.  How 
many  eloquent  sayings,  taken  from  Entile,  do  we 
constantly  hear  ?  How  many  maxims,  fresh  in  1762, 
and  become  almost  trivial  at  the  present  time, 
form  the  current  coin  of  our  pedagogics?  How 
many  others,  wrongly  neglected,  will  be  found  to  be 
of  value  to  us  ? 

52 


ROUSSEAU  53 

It  is  now  commonplace  to  recommend  physical  edu- 
cation. And  Rousseau  is  not  the  first  who,  in  mod- 
ern times,  by  a  reversion  to  the  ancient  mode  of  life, 
urged  youth  to  bodily  exercises.  Ten  years  earlier, 
Turgot  wrote,  "We  have  especially  forgotten  that 
the  formation  of  the  body  is  a  part  of  education." 
Rousseau,  on  this  subject,  refers  his  reader  to  Mon- 
taigne and  Locke ;  he  might  also  have  referred  him 
to  Rabelais.  None  the  less  do  we  praise  him  for 
having,  in  his  turn,  insisted  forcibly  on  precepts 
more  frequently  recommended  than  practised.  Let 
us  be  grateful  to  him  for  entering,  as  he  does,  into 
minute  details  on  clothing,  length  of  sleep,  and  food, 
thus  clearing  the  way  for  the  hygienists  of  childhood. 

Emile  must  strive  to  "combine  the  vigor  of  an 
athlete  with  the  reason  of  a  sage."  He  must  think 
like  a  philosopher  and  work  like  a  peasant.  Bodily 
exercise  is  not  prejudicial  to  the  operations  of  the 
mind.  The  two  actions  should  proceed  in  harmony. 
Sports  were  not  yet  fashionable  in  Rousseau's 
time,  and  no  one  can  blame  him,  when  he  prophesied 
the  French  Revolution,  for  not  having  also  predicted 
the  triumph  of  football.  He  at  least  recommends 
swimming,  which  everybody  can  learn.  Riding  is 
discarded,  as  too  expensive.  When  he  is  twenty, 
however,  Emile  will  take  rides,  without  prejudice 
to  his  long  excursions  on  foot.  Rousseau,  who  had 


54  ROUSSEAU 

walked  across  France,  from  Paris  to  Lyons,  could 
not  help  recommending  pedestrian  exercise.  It  is, 
however,  of  the  infant,  principally,  that  Rousseau 
thinks.  Even  before  it  can  walk,  it  will  be  taken 
daily  into  the  fields  and  meadows,  to  frolic,  to  run 
about  as  soon  as  it  can.  Let  there  be  no  longer  any 
question  of  an  effeminate,  confined  education,  suit- 
able for  making  " scholars  without  muscle/7  Health 
and  physical  force  are  to  be  considered  first.  Rous- 
seau comes  back  to  this  subject  in  his  Considerations 
sur  le  gouvernement  de  Pologne.  In  this  work  he 
calls  for  the  establishment  in  every  school  of  a 
gymnasium  for  bodily  exercise.  "This  is,"  says  he, 
"the  most  important  item  in  education,  not  only  as 
regards  the  formation  of  a  robust  constitution,  but 
even  more  on  the  score  of  morality.  ..." 

Indeed,  it  is  not  solely  from  hygienic  motives, 
nor  for  the  strengthening  of  the  body,  that  Rousseau 
proposes  his  scheme  of  education  in  the  country,  with 
full  liberty  of  movement,  open-air  excursions,  and 
joyous  gambols :  he  sees  in  physical  exercise  a  means 
of  development  of  moral  power,  —  a  prelude  to  edu- 
cation in  courage  and  innate  virtue.  Rousseau 
seems  to  be  inspired  by  memories  of  Spartan  life 
or  Stoic  doctrine.  His  Emile  is  rigorously  brought 
up ;  he  is  inured  to  cold  and  heat  and  accustomed 
to  privation.  None  of  his  caprices,  supposing  such 


ROUSSEAU  55 

possible  in  nature's  pupil,  are  acceded  to.  If  he 
is  granted  what  he  asks  for,  it  is  not  on  account  of 
his  having  made  the  request,  but  because  it  is  known 
that  it  is  really  needed.  And  Rousseau,  who  a  mo- 
ment ago  was  wisely  returning  from  paradox  to 
common  sense,  now,  inversely,  and  with  equal 
facility,  passes  from  equitable,  just  precept  to  ridicu- 
lous and  absurd  exaggeration.  Emile  is  to  walk 
barefoot;  he  is  to  go  about  in  the  dark,  without  a 
candle  or  other  light.  He  will,  perhaps,  learn  in  this 
way  to  have  no  fear  of  the  dark,  but  will  he  not  run 
the  risk  of  a  broken  neck,  "the  eyes  which  he  has 
at  his  finger-tips"  seeming  scarcely  sufficient  to 
insure  him  against  a  slip  or  a  fall  ?  Let  us  pass 
by  these  eccentricities  in  which  Rousseau's  genius 
goes  astray,  and  let  us  be  satisfied  with  proving  that 
he  anticipated  all  those  who,  nowadays,  demand  an 
active,  manly  education,  which  shall  produce  vigor- 
ous men,  dexterous  of  limb  and  capable  of  standing 
face  to  face  with  danger;  ready  and  able  to  render 
practical  assistance  both  to  themselves  and  others ; 
truly  equipped  for  life  as  regards  its  material  oc- 
cupations as  well  as  its  difficulties  and  moral  trials. 
To  view  Rousseau's  famous  theory  on  the  neces- 
sity of  serving  an  apprenticeship  in  a  manual  occu- 
pation from  the  utilitarian  standpoint  alone,  would 
be  to  misinterpret  his  intentions.  Undoubtedly,  he 


56  ROUSSEAU 

saw  in  it  a  resource,  an  assured  livelihood,  should 
there  come  a  time  of  adversity  and  ruin.  A  presci- 
ent thought  for  the  rich  man,  suddenly  reduced  to 
poverty  and  obliged  to  work  for  his  living,  is  not 
foreign  to  Rousseau's  scheme.  "We  are  drawing 
near  the  age  of  revolutions.  Who  can  say  what 
will  then  become  of  you?"  If,  however,  he  makes 
Emile  a  joiner,  not  a  mock  joiner,  but  a  real  workman, 
who  attends  his  workshop  regularly,  and  does  not 
allow  even  the  visit  of  his  betrothed  to  distract  him 
from  his  occupation — there  are  other  motives  gov- 
erning him :  he  wishes  to  reinstate  work,  and  more 
especially,  manual  work.  "Rich  or  poor,  whosoever 
does  not  work  is  a  cheat."  There  is  also  the  peda- 
gogical consideration  that  it  is  not  alone  the  head, 
the  brain  of  a  man,  which  must  be  exercised,  as 
though  the  brain  were  the  entire  man.  We  should  be 
able  to  use  our  hands  as  well  as  our  reason,  and 
because  it  develops  physical  capability,  endurance, 
exertion,  and  practical  acquirements,  manual  labor 
is  good  for  everybody.  Rousseau  would  have  en- 
dorsed these  recent  words  of  M.  Jules  Lemaitre: 
"Our  collegians'  time,  wasted  twice  over  by  them, 
since  they  spend  it  in  not  learning  a  dead  language 
which,  if  learned,  would  be  of  little  use  to  them, 
might  better  be  employed,  I  do  not  say  in  studying 
living  tongues,  natural  science,  and  geography,  — 


ROUSSEAU  57 

that  is  too  apparent,  —  but  in  games,  gymnastics, 
and  joinery.  .  .  ."  Especially  would  he  be  de- 
lighted to  see  in  what  honor  the  manual  occupation 
to  which  he  gave  the  preference  is  held  in  certain 
modern  schools,  in  England,  for  example,  at  Bedale 
College,  the  prototype  of  M.  Demolins'  des  Roches 
school,  where  gardening  and  farm  work  is  succeeded 
by  exercise  in  woodwork.  The  pupils  are  seen 
bringing  real  enthusiasm  to  the  making  of  boxes, 
racks,  and  book  shelves,  on  which  they  then  place 
books  bound  by  themselves. 

The  education  of  the  sense  is  intimately  connected 
with  that  of  the  body.  "Not  only  have  we  arms 
and  legs,  we  also  have  eyes  and  ears."  In  this,  again, 
Rousseau  is  an  excellent  guide.  Pestalozzi,  and  all 
the  patrons  of  the  intuitive  method,  all  those  who 
preach  the  lessons  of  things,  are  only  his  disciples. 
Everything  else  depends  on  the  education  of  the 
senses.  Rousseau  has  sometimes  been  compared 
with  Descartes.  He  would  have  been  the  ' '  Descartes 
of  sensibility"  following  the  Descartes  of  under- 
standing. It  is  more  accurate  to  liken  him  to  Con- 
dillac,  whom  he  classed  "  among  the  best  reasoners 
and  most  profound  metaphysicians  of  his  time." 
Like  the  author  of  the  Traite  des  sensations,  he 
accepts  the  maxim,  "  Everything  that  enters  the 
understanding  comes  through  the  senses."  The 


58  ROUSSEAU 

senses  are  "the  first  faculties  to  form  in  us :  the  first, 
accordingly,  to  be  cultivated."  To  this  cultivation 
Rousseau  devotes  the  twelve  years  of  childhood, 
satisfied  if,  "after  this  long  journey  through  the 
region  of  sensations  to  the  boundaries  of  childish 
reason,"  he  has  succeeded  in  forming  Emile  into  a 
sensitive  being,  able  to  see,  hear,  feel,  calculate  dis- 
tance, and  compare  quantities  and  weights.  .  .  . 
"Yonder  is  a  verykhigh  cherry  tree;  how  can  we 
manage  to  gather  some  cherries?  Will  the  ladder 
in  the  neighboring  barn  do  ?  There  is  a  very  wide 
brook;  will  one  of  the  planks  lying  in  the  yard  be 
long  enough  to  cross  by?  .  .  ." 

femile,  who  uses  the  plane  adroitly  later  on,  is 
clever  in  the  use  of  his  fingers  at  an  early  age.  Rous- 
seau, who  does  not  say  much  of  how  he  taught  him 
to  write,  being  ashamed,  as  he  says,  of  troubling 
over  such  trifles,  —  and  yet  spelling  is  not  taught  by 
nature,  —  takes  great  interest  in  the  study  of  draw- 
ing: "Children,  who  are  great  imitators,  all  try 
to  draw."  In  these  attempts,  however,  it  is  not 
the  art  of  drawing  for  its  own  sake  which  Rousseau 
values  so  highly,  it  is  more  on  account  of  the  profit 
accruing  from  it  to  the  training  of  the  senses  and 
the  organs  of  the  body.  Practice  in  drawing  makes 
the  eye  more  accurate  and  the  hand  more  flexible. 
The  child,  of  course,  is  only  to  draw  from  nature ; 


ROUSSEAU  59 

he  is  not  to  imitate  imitations;  objects  will  be  his 
only  models.  Let  us  add  that  all  idea  of  beauty  is 
absent  from  this  first  initiation  into  the  material 
representation  of  things.  Rousseau  is  not  thinking 
of  producing  an  artist ;  the  result  will,  at  most,  be 
a  geometrician ;  moreover,  if  he  recommends  draw- 
ing, it  is  less  for  Emile  to  imitate  objects  than  to  be- 
come acquainted  with  them. 

Sensations  prepare  ideas.  By  perceiving  objects 
clearly,  Emile  trains  himself  to  judge,  that  is  to 
say,  to  grasp  their  affinities.  His  first  judgments, 
however,  are  confined  strictly  to  the  domain  of  tangible 
knowledge.  He  must  obtain  his  instruction  from 
actual  objects  and  not  from  words.  "Do  not  talk 
to  the  child  of  matters  which  it  cannot  understand. 
Use  no  descriptions,  no  eloquence,  no  figurative  lan- 
guage. Be  satisfied  with  introducing  him  to  ob- 
jects opportunely.  Let  us  transform  our  sensations 
into  ideas,  but  without  leaping  at  one  bound  from 
perceptible  to  intellectual  objects.  —  Turgot  had 
already  said:  'I  wish  abstract  and  general  notions 
to  come  to  children  in  the  same  way  that  they  come 
to  men,  —  by  degrees,  and  by  a  regular  progress  from 
sensible  ideas.'  —  Let  us  pass  slowly  from  one  sen- 
sible idea  to  another.  In  general,  never  replace  a 
thing  by  its  representation  unless  it  be  impossible 
to  show  the  thing  itself.  I  dislike  explanations  and 


60  ROUSSEAU 

discourses.  Things  ?  things  ?  I  cannot  repeat  often 
enough  that  we  attach  too  much  importance  to 
words;  our  chattering  education  produces  nothing 
but  chatterers.  .  .  ." 

A  time  comes,  however,  when  the  employment  of 
words  and  abstract  ideas  is  forced  upon  us,  when 
something  more  than  perceptible  objects  must  be 
studied.  In  the  selection  of  studies  which  he  offers 
Emile,  Rousseau  is  obedient  to  a  principle,  a  single 
criterion,  — that  of  utility.  This  great  visionary  is 
a  utilitarian.  His  programme  certainly  is  short :  it 
is  calculated  to  displease  those  who  demand  a  com- 
plete education,  universal  knowledge  for  a  youth. 
But  in  his  practical  tendencies  he  inaugurates,  with 
omissions,  the  programmes  of  realistic  instruction 
which  will  be  adopted  more  and  more  for  fresh  gen- 
erations. Rousseau  may  well  be  the  father  of  this 
instruction  which  our  contemporaries  are  endeavor- 
ing, not  without  gropings,  to  establish  and  organize 
under  the  fine  title  of  up-to-date  education.  The 
name  is  found:  the  thing  itself  is  by  no  means 
realized. 

Howe¥er  this  may  be,  the  end  in  view  is  now 
settled.  A  fact  which  must  be  recognized  is  that 
intellectual  education  should  be  a  direct  preparation 
for  life,  and  that  the  current  system  is  in  part  bad 
and  doomed  to  disappear,  because,  between  the 


ROUSSEAU  61 

ultra-speculative  studies  which  it  inflicts  on  youth 
and  the  realities  of  existence,  between  the  scholar's 
life  and  the  man's  calling,  there  is  a  profound  disa- 
greement,— whatTaine  called  an  "incompatibility." 
Goethe  was  even  then  saying,  fifty  years  later  than 
Rousseau,  however:    "So  much  theoretical  knowl-  I 
edge,  so  much  science,  is  what  exhausts  our  young  / 
people,  both  physically   and  morally.    They  lack/ 
the  physical  and  moral  energy  necessary  to  make 
a  suitable  entry  into  the  world.  .  .  ." 

Rousseau's  language  is  to  the  same  effect.  It  has 
been  seen  that  he  wished  to  endow  Emile  with  physi- 
cal energy.  He  was  no  less  thoughtful  for  moral 
energy.  This  philosopher,  thought  to  be  lost  in  the 
land  of  chimera,  says :  "When  I  see  that,  at  the  most 
active  time  of  life,  youths  are  kept  to  purely  specu- 
lative studies,  and  are  afterwards,  without  the  least 
experience,  cast  upon  the  world  and  into  business, 
it  seems  to  me  the  offence  against  society  is  as  great 
as  that  against  nature;  it  does  not, therefore, surprise 
me  that  so  few  people  know  how  to  order  their  con- 
duct. What  bizarre  deception  causes  the  persistent 
teaching  of  so  many  useless  things,  whilst  .the  'art 
of  action'  counts  for  nothing?  Nominally,  we  are 
formed  for  society,  and  we  are  instructed  as  though 
each  of  us  had  to  pass  his  life  in  a  cell,  engaged  in 
solitary  thought." 


62  ROUSSEAU 

"The  art  of  action/'  is  not  this  the  watchword  of 
future  education  ?  To  Rousseau  belongs  the  credit 
of  having  uttered  it,  though  he  may  not  have  had 
the  talent  necessary  to  combine  the  means  which  can 
make  it  effective.  There  is  some  temptation  to  reply 
to  him  that  it  is  not  by  rearing  Emile  in  solitude,  "as 
though  he  had  to  pass  his  life  in  solitary  thought" 
in  the  fields,  that  a  youth  is  made  fit  for  actual 
human  life.  But  what  does  one  more  inconsistency 
matter?  Rousseau,  at  least,  understood  that  in- 
struction must  be  relieved  of  all  the  superfluity  of 
show  study.  He,  however,  carries  this  also  to  excess. 
How  can  we  refrain  from  reproving  him  for  the  way 
in  which  he  despises  the  old  classical  studies,  the 
ancient  languages  in  particular,  which  he  dares  to 
describe  as  "a  useless  feature  of  education."  As 
an  educator  he  went  too  far  in  rejecting  the  literary 
sources,  by  draughts  from  which,  as  a  thinker  and 
writer,  he  formed  his  genius.  Men  of  letters  will 
protest,  and  not  unreasonably,  against  such  culpa- 
ble infidelity;  but  all  men  of  good  sense  will  praise 
him  for  having  shown  that  the  aim  of  education 
is  not  the  accumulation  of  sterile  knowledge  in  the 
memory;  that  it  is  the  formation  of  intelligence  by 
a  discreet  introduction  to  a  moderate  selection  of 
useful  studies,  giving  preference  to  attainments 
which  nourish  the  mind  and  train  it  to  be  ready 


ROUSSEAU  63 

for  action,  rather  than  to  those  attainments  which 
are  only  a  useless  ornament. 

Emile  has  reached  the  age  of  fifteen:  his  short 
studies  have  come  to  an  end.  He  has  little  knowl- 
edge, but  he  is  prepared  for  knowledge  of  every  kind, 
and  this  is  the  most  important  consideration.  Do 
not  take  him  for  a  scholar:  he  is  not  meant  to  be 
one ;  but  he  has  a  taste  for  knowledge.  His  natural 
curiosity  has  been  aroused.  According  to  the  say- 
ing which  Rousseau  borrows  from  Montaigne,  if  not 
taught,  he  is  at  least  " teachable. "  No  prejudice 
has  perverted  his  mind  or  impaired  the  accuracy  of 
his  judgment.  He  knows  nothing  on  authority; 
he  has  acquired  all  his  knowledge  for  himself.  He 
has'not  been  taught  the  facts  themselves,  so  much  as 
the  method  of  finding  them  out.  He  has  been  told 
to  look,  and  he  has  found.  Thus  will  he  continue 
all  his  life  on  the  path  to  knowledge,  which  he  has 
been  shown,  "long,  stupendous,  tedious  to  follow." 

In  Rousseau's  methods  of  instruction  we  perceive 
two  excellent  tendencies:  firstly,  that,  in  order  to 
thoroughly  master  what  is  learned,  a  personal  effort 
is  required,  a  research,  a  sort  of  original  discovery, 
and  not  merely  an  effort  of  memory  and  mechanical 
acquisition;  secondly,  that  the  most  important 
thing  is  not  the  knowledge  acquired  at  the  end  of 
study,  the  light  baggage  of  attainments  which  serve 


64  ROUSSEAU 

too  often  as  an  excuse  for  mental  slumber  after 
leaving  college,  but  the  desire  to  enlarge  one's 
knowledge  and  aptitude  for  acquiring  it.  Those 
who  draw  up  the  overladen,  encyclopedic  pro- 
grammes of  our  education,  before  beginning  delib- 
erations which  almost  always  result  in  yet  another 
burden,  even  when  schemes  of  reduction  are  the 
order  of  the  day,  should  read  over  and  meditate 
well  upon  this  pleasing  passage  from  Emile:  "When 
I  see  a  man  carried  away  by  his  love  for  knowledge, 
hastening  from  one  alluring  study  to  another,  with- 
out knowing  where  to  stop,  I  think  I  see  a  child 
gathering  shells  upon  the  seashore.  At  first  he 
loads  himself  with  them ;  then,  tempted  by  others, 
he  throws  these  away  and  gathers  more.  At  last, 
weighed  down  by  so  many,  he  ends  by  throwing  all 
away,  and  returning  empty-handed.  .  .  ."  Is  not 
this  a  very  clever  and  correct  picture  of  many  modern 
scholars,  weighed  down  by  their  burden  of  useless 
acquirements,  embarrassed  with  ideas  of  every  kind, 
disgusted  by  wearisome  studies,  and  finally  leaving 
college  almost  empty-handed  ?  Rousseau  attaches 
himself  here  to  the  great  tradition  of  French  peda- 
gogics, a  tradition  too  often  set  at  naught  in  our 
schemes  for  study.  It  advocates,  as  Nicole  said, 
"the  use  of  knowledge  only  as  an  instrument  for  the 
formation  of  reason";  which,  of  course,  applies  to 


ROUSSEAU  65 

knowledge  only  in  so  far  as  it  plays  a  part  in  that 
general  culture  aimed  at  by  secondary  education. 

If  we  now  examine  in  detail  the  programme  of 
utilitarian  studies  which  Rousseau  intends  for  Emile, 
we  shall  be  surprised  more  than  once,  both  on  ac- 
count of  what  he  includes  and  what  he  omits. 
Rousseau  is  the  most  disconcerting  and  deceptive  of 
educators.  Thus,  he  forbids  the  study  of  history, 
and  this  is  one  of  his  most  provoking  paradoxes. 
In  this  he  is,  however,  logical  with  himself.  Since 
Emile  is  "to  be  removed  from  humankind,"  he  must 
be  denied  knowledge  of  the  dead  as  well  as  contact 
with  the  living.  History  is  the  great  agent  by 
which  social  consciousness  is  developed;  now,  in 
his  early  education,  Emile  is  only  an  individualist, 
a  perfect  egoist,  without  any  social  sentiment.  It 
is  known,  moreover,  what  special  argument  Rous- 
seau advanced  and  upheld  to  excuse  the  omission 
of  history ;  namely,  that  a  child  is  incapable  of  un- 
derstanding it.  History  is  as  much  out  of  his  reach 
as  the  philosophic  idea  of  God:  as  though  there 
were  not  a  history  for  children,  a  history  made  up  of 
description,  narrative,  and  great  men's  lives.  For- 
tunately, in  the  matter  of  history,  as  in  so  many 
other  things,  Rousseau  contradicted  himself,  and 
to  rectify  his  errors  or  correct  his  semi-voluntary 
paradoxes,  it  is  sufficient  to  appeal  from  Rousseau 


66  ROUSSEAU 

to  Rousseau.  As  legislator  of  the  Polish  govern- 
ment, his  language  is  quite  different  from  that  used 
by  the  theorist  of  Emile.  Far  from  condemning 
history,  he  will  be  found  rather  to  carry  it  to 
excess. 

In  language  which,  in  its  animation,  recalls  the 
words  used  by  Rabelais  to  extol  the  study  of  natural 
science  when  he  makes  Gargantua  say  to  his  son: 
"I  want  you  to  be  acquainted  with  the  fish  of  every 
sea,  river,  and  spring,  —  with  all  the  birds  of  the 
air,  the  trees  and  shrubs  of  the  forest,  and  all  the 
herbs  of  the  earth;  .  .  ."  similarly,  Rousseau  says: 
"I  want  the  young  Pole,  when  learning  to  read,  to 
read  things  concerning  his  country ;  so  that  when  he 
is  ten  years  old  he  shall  be  acquainted  with  all  its 
products ;  when  twelve,  all  its  provinces,  roads,  and 
towns;  when  fifteen,  its  entire  history;  when  six- 
teen, all  its  laws;  thus,  every  fine  deed  which  has 
been  done,  and  every  noted  man  who  shall  have 
lived,  in  all  Poland,  shall  fill  his  heart  and  mind." 
The  education  of  a  little  citizen,  a  future  patriot, 
could  not  have  a  better  preparation.  Let  us  take 
note,  however,  that  Rousseau's  retraction  is  not 
complete ;  he  speaks  only  of  national  history,  leav- 
ing the  general  history  of  mankind,  which  has  no 
interest  for  him,  a  sealed  book  to  his  pupil. 

Emile,  having  been  cheated  of  knowledge  of  the 


ROUSSEAU  67 

ethical  world,  will,  in  compensation,  be  nourished 
with  knowledge  of  the  material  world.  The  study  of 
nature  must  come  before  everything  else.  Is  not 
the  same  thing  thought  at  the  present  day  by  the 
educators  of  the  United  States,  who  attach  so  much 
importance  to  knowledge  of  natural  truths  ?  What 
does  cause  surprise,  is  that,  in  his  programme, 
Rousseau  should  put  astronomy  in  the  forefront. 
Auguste  Comte  also  mentions  it  first  in  his  cata- 
logue of  sciences  and  in  his  system  of  positive  edu- 
cation. One  has  the  right  to  ask  why.  Utility 
cannot  be  its  recommendation.  Emile  is  to  travel, 
but  he  is  not  intended  to  navigate,  and  it  does  not 
seem  at  all  likely  that  he  would  find  a  knowledge  of 
the  constellations  and  heavenly  bodies  of  any  use 
to  him.  Likely  enough  what  decided  Rousseau  was 
the  fact  that  astronomy,  physical  astronomy  at 
least,  is  one  of  the  sciences  most  suitable  for  the 
application  of  his  beloved  method,  —  the  method  of 
conscious  and  direct  observation  of  things.  Emile, 
who  does  not  know  what  a  class  room  or  a  study  is, 
gains  his  knowledge  in  the  open;  he  contemplates 
nature's  great  spectacles,  and  reflects  in  the  presence 
of  the  starry  sky. 

In  virtue  of  the  same  system,  astronomy  is  fol- 
lowed by  physical  science  and  geography,  keeping 
to  tangible  and  concrete  studies  in  which  abstrac- 


68  ROUSSEAU 

tion  plays  the  least  important  part.  Emile  learns 
geography  without  maps,  during  his  walks  and  in 
presence  of  the  actual  objects.  "Why  all  these 
representations  ?  .  .  .  I  recollect  seeing  somewhere 
a  text-book  on  geography  which  began  thus :  '  What 
is  the  world?  —  A  pasteboard  globe.7  .  .  ."  The 
only  method  of  preventing  these  fallacies  is  to  in- 
troduce to  the  child  the  thing  itself  and  not  its  arti- 
ficial representation. 

An  elementary  knowledge  of  astronomy,  physics, 
and  geography  will  be  practically  everything  till  the 
age  of  fifteen  is  reached.  Has  Emile  learned  gram- 
mar? Not  otherwise  than  by  using  his  mother- 
tongue  and  hearing  his  master  talk :  "Always  speak 
correctly  in  his  presence.7'  At  all  events,  at  this 
age,  he  as  yet  knows  nothing  of  either  ancient  or 
modern  literature.  Poets  and  prose-writers  of  every 
degree  are  as  unknown  to  him  as  historians.  Rous- 
seau, before  Condorcet  and  so  many  others,  is  already 
an  expert  in  scientific  education;  but  in  science 
itself  he  rejects  all  that  is  pure  speculation  and 
abstract  generality.  He  admits  that  there  is  a 
chain  of  general  truths  by  which  all  sciences  are 
linked  to  common  principles  and  successively  un- 
folded. But  "with  this  we  have  nothing  to  do77  in 
the  formation  of  the  mind.  "There  is  another, 
altogether  different,  which  shows  each  object  as  the 


ROUSSEAU  69 

cause  of  another,  and  always  points  out  the  one 
following.  This  order,  which  by  a  perpetual  curi- 
osity keeps  alive  the  attention  demanded  by  all, 
is  the  one  followed  by  most  men,  and  of  all  others 
necessary  with  children.77  Thus,  in  the  study  of 
physics,  arrangements  will  be  made  to  connect  all 
experiments  by  a  kind  of  deduction,  so  that,  assisted 
by  this  connection,  children  can  arrange  them 
methodically  in  their  minds,  and  recall  them  when 
required.  All  this,  however,  only  deals  with  the 
establishment  of  a  material  order  between  percep- 
tible truths.  To  the  senses,  Rousseau  subordinates 
even  the  deduction  of  ideas  and  their  linking  to- 
gether. No  doubt  it  is  on  this  account  that  mathe- 
matics do  not  figure  in  Rousseau's  programme. 
Emile,  who  is  forbidden  to  read  even  La  Fontaine's 
Fables,  on  the  ground  that  he  would  not  understand 
them,  does  not  seem  to  be  any  more  acquainted  with 
arithmetical  rules.  .  .  .  Decidedly  his  instruction 
is  insufficient  and  limited.  Rousseau  had  none  of 
that  holy  horror  of  ignorance  which  characterizes 
later  educators:  "Ignorance,"  said  he,  "never  did 
harm;  error  alone  is  pernicious."  Education  has  an 
importance  beyond  instruction.  "We  prefer  good 
men  to  scholars.77 

Rousseau  is  more  happily  inspired  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  will  than  he  is  when  dealing  with  the 


70  ROUSSEAU 

mind.  Despite  appearances,  and  despite  the  con- 
tinual presence  of  a  guardian  whose  surveillance 
would  not  seem  altogether  favorable  to  the  develop- 
ment of  individuality,  iEmile  is  really  brought  up  in 
liberty.  It  is  certain,  and  we  do  not  forget  it,  that 
Rousseau  was  chiefly  deficient  in  character  and 
energy.  He  could  never  overcome  temptation. 
"It  was  always  impossible  for  me  to  act  against 
my  inclination."  All  through  his  life  he  was  the 
plaything  of  circumstances,  the  victim  of  his  pas- 
sions. This,  however,  rather  disposed  him  to  desire 
for  Emile  a  better  education  than  the  one  from 
which  he  himself  suffered,  an  education  of  a  kind  to 
accustom  a  child  to  act  on  his  own  initiative,  in 
fine,  an  education  of  "  self  -government":  "The 
child  must  be  left  to  himself,  both  as  regards  body 
and  mind.  The  boon  of  freedom  is  worth  many 
scars." 

By  emancipating  the  child,  Rousseau  intends, 
primarily,  to  make  him  happy,  and  that  at  once; 
for  the  poor  little  one  may  die  young,  and  before 
he  dies  he  must  taste  life.  Now  a  child's  happiness, 
like  a  man's,  consists  in  the  exercise  of  liberty. 
Rousseau  had  a  sincere  affection  for  children.  In 
all  his  wise  recommendations  concerning  the  care 
to  be  taken  with  an  infant,  an  inspiration  of  ten- 
derness almost  unknown  before  his  time  may  be 


ROUSSEAU  71 

detected,  a  lively  feeling  of  pity  for  these  frail 
creatures  who  are,  as  a  first  consideration,  to  be 
made  to  live.  What  a  number  of  tender  things  he 
has  written  on  children !  What  treasures  of  affec- 
tion left  unused  by  this  culpable  father!  " Nature 
made  children  to  be  loved  and  succored.  .  .  . 
Does  it  not  seem  as  though  a  child  displays  such  a 
sweet  face  and  affecting  manner  only  that  every- 
thing which  comes  near  it  may  be  touched  by  its 
feebleness  and  may  hasten  to  its  assistance?" 
Tutors  of  all  ages  will  have  to  draw  inspiration  from 
cautions  like  the  following:  "If  you  do  not  open 
your  heart,  others'  hearts  will  remain  closed  to 
you.  It  is  your  care  and  affection  that  you  must 
give." 

But  beyond  the  child's  present,  and  the  joy  in  life 
which  he  wishes  to  insure  for  it  immediately,  Rous- 
seau also  thought  of  the  future,  and  the  require- 
ments of  social  life.  By  the  independence  which 
he  grants  it  from  the  cradle,  when  he  abolishes  the 
imprisonment  of  swaddling  clothes;  as  later,  in 
boyhood's  years,  when  he  wars  against  prohibitions 
and  verbal  injunctions,  in  order  to  substitute  for 
them  instruction  from  facts  alone  and  the  living 
lessons  of  example, —  "  Example,  example !  lacking 
this,  success  with  children  was  never  obtained;"  — 
when,  finally,  he  appeals  to  all  that  is  spontaneous 


72  ROUSSEAU 

in  the  intelligence  and  personal  in  the  will  of  his 
pupil,  it  is  evident  that  he  wishes,  in  this  way,  to 
form  men  of  stronger  physique,  more  vigorous 
morals,  and  greater  control  over  their  actions,  than 
the  scholars  of  old-style  colleges,  in  the  austerity  of 
their  cloistered  life,  were  prepared  to  become,  and 
than  the  students  of  our  modern  high  schools  are, 
even  at  the  present  day,  in  spite  of  the  achievement 
of  so  much  progress. 

Note,  however,  that  Emile's  education  is  by  no 
means  one  of  complacency  and  enervating  laxity: 
rather  is  he  submitted  to  a  regimen  of  severity. 
His  room  is  in  every  way  like  a  peasant's.  And  if 
Rousseau  has  made  a  gleam  of  joy  shine  in  his  life 
by  the  liberty  which  he  grants  him,  he  none  the 
less  wishes  the  child  to  know  how  to  bear  suffering. 
Suffering  will  leave  Emile  stronger,  and  is  the  first 
thing  that  he  must  learn.  Primarily,  he  is  thus 
early  armed  against  the  evils  which  existence  has 
in  store  for  him.  But  he  also  learns  to  sympathize 
with  the  misfortunes  of  others. 

Man  is  an  apprentice,  with  affliction  for  his  master. 

Earlier  than  De  Musset,  Rousseau  said  in  his  fine 
prose,  "The  man  who  is  ignorant  of  affliction,  knows 
neither  human  tenderness  nor  the  sweetness  of 
commiseration." 

In  spite  of  the  sort  of  antisocial  sequestration 


ROUSSEAU  73 

which  Rousseau  imposed  on  Emile  for  fifteen  years, 
it  must  not  be  imagined  that  he  gave  up  all  idea  of 
making  a  feeling,  loving  being  of  him  a  little  later. 
Even  as  a  child,  he  must  be  shown  "this  world's 
unfortunates/7  The  spirit  of  fraternity  fills  Rous- 
seau's generous  soul  to  overflowing:  " Proclaim 
yourself  aloud  the  protector  of  the  unhappy.  Be 
just,  humane,  and  kindly.  Do  not  give  alms  alone, 
give  charity."  Rousseau  advances  toward  modern 
socialism.  Note,  for  example,  this  bold  reflection: 
"When  poor  people  were  willing  there  should  be 
rich  people,  the  rich  promised  to  take  care  of  those 
without  means  of  subsistence,  either  from  their 
property  or  labor.'7  Arrived  at  man's  estate, 
Emile  spends  a  part  of  his  time  in  doing  good  to 
those  around  him.  When  in  love,  he  does  not  allow 
the  thought  of  Sophie  alone  to  absorb  him.  He 
interrupts  his  attentions  to  his  betrothed  that  he 
may  act  as  a  true  philanthropist.  He  travels  the 
country ;  he  examines  the  land,  its  productions,  and 
their  cultivation;  he  himself  ploughs  on  occasion. 
His  knowledge  of  natural  history  is  utilized  for  the 
benefit  of  the  cultivators;  he  teaches  them  better 
methods.  He  visits  the  peasants  in  their  homes; 
and,  after  inquiring  into  their  needs,  he  helps  them 
with  his  person  and  his  money.  Does  a  peasant 
fall  ill  ?  He  has  him  cared  for ;  he  himself  attends 


74  ROUSSEAU 

to  him.  Simple  medicine,  indeed,  and  such  as  can 
be  allowed  by  an  enemy  of  doctors,  consisting,  as  it 
does,  in  more  substantial  nourishment.  He  makes 
his  future  wife  a  partner  in  these  good  works:  he 
takes  her  to  visit  the  poor,  to  see  a  laborer  who 
has  broken  his  leg,  and  whose  wife  is  about  to  be 
confined.  "With  her  gentle,  light  hand/7  Sophie 
puts  dressings  on  the  wounded  man:  she  waits  on, 
pities,  and  consoles  him. 

By  birth  and  extraction  Rousseau  was  of  the 
people.  He  remained  one  of  them  by  the  simplicity 
of  his  tastes,  living  like  a  laborer,  fond  of  associat- 
ing with  the  lowly,  though  at  times  he  did  not 
disdain  the  complaisance  of  great  lords,  and  was  not 
insensible  to  the  caresses  of  great  ladies.  Does  this 
imply  that  in  his  educational  projects  he  worked 
directly  for  the  people  and  for  the  people's  instruc- 
tion? No.  Emile,  if  not  a  gentleman  like  Locke's 
pupil,  is  at  any  rate  of  the  middle  classes,  rich  and 
well  born.  But  by  the  fact  that  he  eliminated  ancient 
languages  and  all  expensive  studies,  and  replaced 
"book"  education  by  the  simple,  natural  cultivation 
of  the  talents  which  every  human  creature  brings 
into  the  world  at  its  birth,  Rousseau  suggested 
the  idea  of  the  universal  emancipation  of  intelli- 
gence; he  inspired  the  democratic  idea  of  making 
instruction  general.  He  did  not  wish  for  the  "cere- 


ROUSSEAU  75 

monious"  education  of  the  rich,  for  what  he  still 
called  " exclusive"  education,  which  only  tends  to 
distinguish  from  the  common  people  those  who  have 
received  it.  Moreover,  the  object  being  to  make 
men,  and  not  scholars,  the  poor  would,  in  truth, 
"require  no  education."  Freed  by  their  life  of 
toil  from  all  the  conventions  of  society,  subjected 
to  nature's  laws  alone,  "the  poor  can  of  themselves 
become  men." 

Rousseau  —  and  for  it  he  has  been  severely 
blamed  —  wished  to  form,  not  a  man  of  a  certain 
station,  or  of  a  settled  profession,  but  just  a  man. 
He  thought  too  much,  says  Taine,  of  "man  in  the 
abstract,"  and  not  enough  of  actual  man,  such  as  he 
is  made  by  the  circumstances  of  time  and  place, 
and  as  he  should  be  trained  by  education,  so  that  he 
may  be  fitted  for  his  place  in  life.  "Whether  my 
pupil  be  intended  for  the  army,  the  church,  or  the 
bar,  matters  little  to  me.  Before  he  adopts  the 
vocation  of  his  parents,  nature  calls  upon  him  to 
be  a  man.  How  to  live  is  the  business  I  wish  to 
teach  him.  On  leaving  my  hands,  he  will  not,  I 
admit,  be  a  magistrate,  a  soldier,  or  a  priest :  first 
of  all  he  will  be  a  man.  All  that  a  man  should  be, 
he  can  be."  Let  us  give  praise  to  Rousseau  for 
having  reminded  men  that  they  have  a  personal 
destiny,  that  first  and  foremost  they  should,  if  pos- 


76  ROUSSEAU 

sible,  set  up  and  strengthen  in  themselves  the  prin- 
ciples of  human  dignity.  Let  us,  however,  censure 
him  for  keeping  too  strictly  to  the  absolute,  without 
considering  the  contingencies  and  relative  conditions 
which  require  the  individual  to  graft  on  the  common 
stem  that  branch  of  special  acquirements  which  the 
place  that  he  will  occupy  in  life  exacts,  as  a  con- 
dition of  being  worthily  held.  He  did  not  suffi- 
ciently reflect  on  the  principle,  which  is  becoming 
more  and  more  insistent  on  recognition,  that  edu- 
cation must  be  diversified  and  specialized  in  a  score 
of  forms,  that  it  may  be  in  conformity  with  the 
various  exigencies  of  social  [labor,  no  less  than  in 
correspondence  with  the  multiplicity  of  individual 
talents.  Rousseau  has  erred  in  a  manner  analogous 
to  those  religious  educators  who,  forgetful  of  the 
present  life,  and  thoughtful  only  for  the  life  to 
come,  —  which  alone  has  any  value  in  their  eyes, — 
aspire  only  to  the  rearing  of  a  pure  and  virtuous 
creature  for  the  bliss  of  life  everlasting.  The 
philosopher  of  nature  and  ideal  humanity  joins 
hands,  without  suspecting  it,  with  the  mystical 
constructors  of  God's  City.  When  his  "one  and 
indivisible7'  education  is  finished,  Emile  may  be  the 
type  of  a  man ;  but  he  must  not  be  expected  to  be 
an  engineer,  a  doctor,  or  a  lawyer.  Of  what  use, 
then,  will  he  be  in  society,  since  he  can  bring  no 


ROUSSEAU  77 

special  attainments  beyond  those  proper  to  his  trade 
of  joiner  ? 

It  is  well  that  Emile  has  learned  a  manual  trade ; 
it  is  well  that  he  is  "fit  for  all  stations  of  life  " ;  but 
perhaps  no  harm  would  ensue  from  the  addition  of 
a  professional  preparation  for  one  of  the  functions 
to  which  society  calls  men. 

At  times,  however,  the  practical  spirit  awakens  in 
Rousseau  and  timidly  takes  its  revenge.  After  he 
has  betrothed  Emile  to  Sophie,  he  forces  him  to 
leave  her  and  travel  abroad  for  two  years.  By  a 
fresh  contradiction,  Rousseau,  who  so  long  kept 
Emile  from  coming  into  contact  with  his  own  com- 
patriots, and  did  not  introduce  him  into  society  till 
he  was  twenty,  now  enlarges  the  circle  of  his  social 
connections  to  the  extent  of  wishing  him  to  enter 
into  relations  with  the  men  of  other  countries. 
Travel,  says  he,  forms  part  of  education :  travel,  not 
for  pleasure,  however,  but  for  instruction  and  study, 
a  kind  of  " scholastic  course"  abroad.  Emile  must 
be  acquainted  with  the  genius  and  ways  of  foreign 
nations ;  truly  it  was  wasted  time  to  forbid  so  long 
the  reading  of  histories !  It  is  true  that  books  are 
worth  nothing.  It  is  with  his  eyes  that  Emile  should 
see  foreign  things,  as  all  other  things.  Rousseau 
never  abandons  the  method  of  direct  observation. 
If  we  are  to  believe  him,  the  French  are,  of  all  the 


78  ROUSSEAU 

peoples  of  the  world,  the  greatest  travellers.  Was 
this  true  in  1762?  We  doubt  it.  At  all  events,  it 
is  regrettable  that  it  is  not  now  the  case.  Emile 
travels,  then.  So  that,  in  the  course  of  his  wander- 
ings, he  be  not  turned  aside  and  diverted  from  the 
serious  objects  of  his  observations,  Rousseau  has 
taken  care  that  he  is  enamoured  before  his  departure. 
The  love  sworn  to  Sophie  is  to  preserve  him  from  all 
dissipation,  and  to  shelter  him  from  passion  and 
vice  in  the  great  towns  which  he  visits.  On  his 
travels,  Emile  devotes  himself  entirely  to  his  obser- 
vations, which  are  not,  however,  concerned  with 
monuments  and  antiquities,  or  on  the  relics  and  ruins 
of  the  past.  That  is  of  no  interest ;  it  is  the  present 
which  should  be  known.  Emile  is  not  an  archse- 
ologist.  His  attention  is  directed  especially  to  ques- 
tions of  government,  to  customs  and  laws.  He  will 
study  politics  and  comparative  legislation  on  the 
spot.  And  when  he  returns  to  his  native  land,  he 
can  usefully  examine  the  institutions  of  France,  in 
order  to  judge  of  them  by  comparison.  Perhaps  he 
may  deem  them  inferior  and  bad,  and  will  conse- 
quently be  moved  to  the  ambition  of  contributing 
to  their  reformation.  On  the  contrary,  this  cos- 
mopolitan of  a  few  months'  standing  may  have 
become  a  more  ardent  patriot,  attached  to  his  own 
country  the  more  for  being  better  informed  regard- 


ROUSSEAU  79 

ing  the  vices  and  evils  of  other  countries.  Let  us 
be  assured,  if  Rousseau  had  lived  in  our  time,  he 
would  have  joined  his  eloquent  rebukes  to  those  of 
the  present-day  educators,  who  urge  young  French- 
men to  become  colonists.  It  was  not  a  fit  time  to 
think  of  that  in  1762,  when,  through  the  fault  of  its 
monarchy,  France  was  on  the  point  of  losing  her 
magnificent  colonial  empire. 

The  most  important  of  the  results  of  Emile's 
travel  is  that  he  learned  "two  or  three  foreign 
languages."  Rousseau  did  not  give  him  much  time 
for  that ;  difficulty  of  achievement,  as  we  know,  does 
not  trouble  him.  It  is  scarcely  apparent  how  Emile, 
who  as  yet  has  studied  no  foreign  language,  living 
or  dead,  is  able  so  rapidly  to  learn  German  and 
English.  What  matters  this?  The  main  thing  is 
that  here  again  Rousseau  pointed  out  the  goal  and 
drew  attention  to  the  importance  of  studying  the 
living  languages.  Further,  in  the  course  of  his 
travels,  Emile  took  care  to  cultivate  acquaintance 
with  foreigners  of  parts,  so  that,  having  returned 
home,  he  continues  to  correspond  with  them.  This 
exchange  of  letters,  which  lasts  his  whole  life,  will 
raise  his  thoughts  and  sentiments  above  national 
prejudice,  and  will  make  him  a  citizen  of  the 
world.  Thus  did  Rousseau  prepare  the  way  for 
the  modern  educators,  who  protest  against  French- 


80  ROUSSEAU 

men  confining  themselves  to  devout  contemplation 
of  themselves,  and  who  exhort  them  to  mix  with 
the  universal  life  of  humanity,  that  they  may  see 
and  comprehend  the  world  outside. 


EMILE  is  a  perfect  man ;  to  be  worthy  of  becoming 
his  wife,  Sophie  should  be  an  ideal  woman.  But 
Rousseau  is  far  from  successful  in  this  second  part 
of  his  task;  and  woman's  education,  as  displayed 
by  him,  is  certainly  not  so  well  understood  as  man's. 

It  is  with  special  care,  however,  that  Rousseau 
wrote  the  fifth  book  of  Emile,  which  is  almost  en- 
tirely devoted  to  feminine  instruction.  He  com- 
posed it,  he  says,  "in  a  continual  ecstasy"  (he  was 
at  the  time  the  guest  of  the  duchess  of  Luxembourg, 
at  Montmorency),  "in  the  midst  of  woods  and 
streams  and  choirs  of  birds  of  every  kind,  with  the 
fragrance  of  the  orange-blossom  in  the  air";  and 
he  in  part  attributes  "the  rather  fresh  coloring" 
of  these  pages,  more  poetical  than  philosophical,  to 
the  pleasant  impressions  which  he  experienced  in 
this  earthly  paradise.  But  he  lived  there  with  his 
Therese,  —  a  companion  and  model  ill-fitted  to 
assist  him  in  the  conception  of  an  educated  woman. 
He  was  constantly  at  the  mansion  and  received 
visits  from  brilliant  and  titled  ladies,  —  a  compan- 

81 


82  ROUSSEAU 

ionship  ill-suited  perhaps  to  the  conception  of  a 
simple,  strong  woman,  whose  likeness  he  wished  to 
sketch.  The  material  surroundings  themselves,  also 
the  delicious  abode  at  Mont-Louis  was  more  con- 
ducive to  revery  than  analysis.  The  book  of 
Sophie  is  only  a  pleasant  idyl.  The  poet  and 
novelist  decidedly  gain  the  upper  hand  in  it.  Of 
all  things  that  Rousseau  fails  to  understand,  said 
Saint-Marc  Girardin,  it  is  woman  that  he  under- 
stands least.  Certain  of  her  refinements,  her  noble 
dignity  and  pure  moral  grandeur  have,  at  all  events, 
eluded  him.  He  has  for  her  more  tenderness  and 
loving  adoration  than  true  respect  and  esteem.  Even 
in  the  most  exquisite  descriptions  of  his  heroine, 
looked  at  both  physically  and  morally,  an  indefin- 
able, sensual  appetite  is  always  to  be  detected,  —  a 
memory  of  common  or  worldly  women,  coquettish 
and  artificial,  whom  he  had  known  and  loved. 

Sophie,  moreover,  is  not  altogether  an  imaginary 
being.  When  outlining  her  lineaments,  Rousseau 
asserts  that  he  had  in  his  mind  an  actual  model. 
Sophie  existed  then,  and  the  name  alone  was  of  his 
invention.  Dead  in  the  springtime  of  her  life,  he 
merely  " revived"  her  to  make  "this  lovable  girl" 
Emile's  companion.  The  story  is  dramatic  and 
touching.  Having  read  Telemachus}  at  the  age  of 
twenty  the  real  Sophie  was  smitten  with  love  for 


ROUSSEAU  83 

F&ielon's  hero,  and,  being  unable  to  find  in  the  world 
a  youth  like  him,  she  died  of  unsatisfied  love,  of 
languor  and  despair.  F&ielon  is  thus  responsible 
for  the  death  of  a  maiden.  .  .  .  How  does  it  come 
about  that  this  tragic  episode  of  real  life  did  not 
prevent  Rousseau  from  making  his  Sophie,  who  was 
the  image  of  the  other,  too  sensitive  and  romantic  ? 
It  is  true  that,  overtaken  with  tardy  remorse,  he 
seems  to  have  realized  the  vanity  of  his  efforts,  and 
himself  emphasized  the  insufficiency  and  inefficacy 
of  his  scheme  of  feminine  education,  when,  with 
strange  irony,  in  the  Roman  des  Solitaires,  he  shows 
us  the  virtuous  Sophie  become  an  unfaithful  wife, 
although  she  saw  in  woman's  misconduct  nothing 
but  "misery,  disorder,  unhappiness,  opprobrium, 
and  ignominy.'7 

Between  Emile's  education  and  that  which  Sophie 
receives,  there  is  more  than  a  contrast,  there  is  an 
abyss.  Rousseau  emancipated  Emile;  he  enslaves 
Sophie.  To  the  same  degree  that  he  showed  him- 
self bold  in  his  views  on  the  "foundation77  of  men, 
is  he  timid,  backward,  and  conservative  in  his  ideas 
on  woman7s  education.  The  apostle  of  individual- 
ism renounces  his  doctrine.  He  subordinates  woman 
to  man;  of  her  he  makes  an  humble  subject  whose 
only  value  lies  in  ministering  to  her  husband7s  hap- 
piness. He  confines  her  strictly  to  her  duties  as 


84  ROUSSEAU 

daughter,  wife,  and  mother.  If  he  invites  her  elo- 
quently to  fulfil  her  obligations  as  a  teacher,  he  for- 
gets to  provide  her,  by  a  sufficiently  well-developed 
instruction,  with  the  means  of  acquitting  herself 
worthily  in  this  great  mission.  Finally,  he  does  not 
appear  to  suppose  that  woman  also  has  a  claim  to 
acquire  personalty,  that  she  legitimately  aspires  to 
extension  of  her  acquirements  and  development  of 
her  faculties,  so  that,  with  her  enlightened  intelli- 
gence and  emancipated  reason,  she  may  truly  be 
man's  equal  and,  indeed,  the  "  abstract  woman." 

Rousseau's  maxim  is  that  woman  should  be  obe- 
dient to  man,  that  her  existence  is,  as  it  were,  con- 
ditional on  that  of  man.  Listen  to  these  continual 
repetitions  which,  like  a  monotonous  refrain,  re- 
appear on  every  page:  "The  whole  education  of 
women  ought  to  be  relative  to  men.  .  .  .  Woman 
is  specially  made  to  please  men,  to  be  useful  to 
them,  to  make  themselves  loved  and  honored  by 
them,  to  rear  them  when  young,  to  care  for  them 
when  grown  up,  to  advise  them,  to  console  them,  to 
render  their  lives  agreeable  and  sweet  to  them,  — 
these  are  the  duties  of  women  at  all  times,  and  should 
be  taught  to  them  from  their  childhood.  .  .  .  All 
their  caprices  must  be  overcome  so  as  to  make  them 
submissive  to  the  will  of  others.  .  .  .  Dependence 
is  the  woman's  natural  condition.  .  .  .  Woman  is 


ROUSSEAU  85 

created  to  be  all  her  life  subject  to  man  and  to  man's 
judgment.  ...  It  is  a  law  of  nature  that  woman 
shall  obey  man.  .  .  .  She  is  created  to  give  way  to 
man,  and  to  suffer  even  his  injustice.  .  .  ." 

There  is,  then,  no  idea  of  educating  Sophie  for 
herself.  Rousseau  does  not,  at  heart,  admit  the 
equality  of  the  sexes.  He  says  of  woman  that  she 
is  "an  imperfect  man,"  that  in  many  respects  she 
is  only  "a  grown-up  child."  I  am  aware  that 
Rousseau,  with  his  customary  inconsistency,  con- 
tradicts himself  in  other  passages:  "The  question 
of  superiority,"  he  says,  "must  not  be  urged: 
differences  account  for  all.  .  .  .  Each  sex  has 
qualities  suited  to  its  destiny  and  part  in  life.  .  .  . 
It  is  perhaps  one  of  the  marvels  of  nature  that  two 
beings  so  similar,  and  at  the  same  time  so  differently 
constituted,  should  have  been  made.  .  .  ."  But 
he  insists  upon  these  differences:  "It  is  demon- 
strated that  man  and  woman  are  not  constituted 
alike,  either  in  temperament  or  character."  By 
speaking  of  differences,  does  not  one  singularly 
compromise  the  idea  of  equality? 

What,  then,  is  Rousseau's  idea  of  the  character 
and  temperament  proper  to  woman  ?  He  expounds 
it  to  us  twice :  first,  somewhat  ponderously  in  the 
long  pages  of  general  philosophy  which  begin  the 
fifth  book  of  Emile,  and  form  a  kind  of  outline  of 


86  ROUSSEAU 

feminine  psychology;  and  later,  with  a  quite  poetic 
charm,  when,  putting  away  abstract  considerations, 
he  raises  the  curtain  to  show  Sophie  in  her  grace 
and  beauty. 

Woman  is  weak.  She  is  passionate:  "If  she 
pretends  to  be  unable  to  bear  the  lightest  burdens, 
it  is  not  only  to  appear  delicate,  it  is  to  arrange  ex- 
cuses for  herself  and  the  right  to  be  feeble  should 
occasion  require.77  Her  heart  feeds  on  unlimited 
desires  of  love;  it  is  true  that  "the  Supreme  Being 
added  modesty77  in  order  to  counterbalance  and 
restrain  them.  Sophie,  like  all  women,  is  a  natural 
coquette.  She  is  fond  of  finery,  almost  from  the 
moment  of  her  birth.  She  is  not  displeased  to  dis- 
play "her  well-turned  leg.77  She  is  inquisitive,  too 
much  so.  She  is  artful,  and  necessarily  so,  to  com- 
pensate for  what  she  lacks  in  strength.  "You  tell 
me  that  little  Sophie  is  very  artful,77  wrote  Rous- 
seau to  the  prince  of  Wiirtemberg,  "so  much  the 
better!  .  .  ,77  Artfulness  is  a  natural  talent,  and 
everything  natural  is  "good  and  right.77  The  in- 
stinct of  artfulness,  then,  must  be  cultivated.  Rous- 
seau, however,  is  good  enough  to  admit  that  it  is 
as  well  "to  prevent  its  abuse.77  Sophie  is  talkative. 
She  is  imperious.  She  is  by  nature  a  glutton  — 
here  Rousseau  forgets  that  he  has  declared  all 
primitive  instincts  to  be  excellent.  Does  not  the 


ROUSSEAU  87 

doctrine  of  original  goodness  apply  to  woman  with 
as  much  force  as  to  man  ?  Sophie  is  temperate,  but 
she  has  become  so.  ... 

So  much  for  the  defects,  and  we  have  minimized 
them.  The  portrait  is  not  overdrawn.  Let  us  now 
examine  the  other  side:  the  good,  the  qualities. 
Woman  is  more  docile  than  man.  She  has  more 
delicacy  than  man.  She  is  more  skilful  in  reading 
the  human  heart.  Her  dominant  passion  is  virtue. 
Let  us  note,  moreover,  that  it  is  never  certain 
whether  Rousseau  means  to  speak  of  woman  in 
general,  or  of  the  exceptional  creature  which  he 
has  personified  in  Sophie.  Her  chief  happiness 
is  to  make  her  parents  happy.  She  is  chaste  and 
honest  till  her  last  sigh:  here  the  ideal  woman  is 
obviously  intended,  the  one  of  whom  he  says, 
"A  virtuous  woman  is  almost  the  equal  of  the 
angels!  .  .  ." 

But  woman,  in  general,  is  not  man's  equal.  A 
charming  being  whom  Rousseau  idolizes,  yet  none 
the  less  binds  down  to  the  subordinate  position  of 
her  part  as  younger  sister,  and  inferior  in  the  human 
family.  Her  natural  qualities  must  be  respected, 
be  they  good  or  ill.  It  does  not  seem  as  though 
Rousseau  wishes  even  her  faults  to  be  corrected, 
because  they  may  perchance  help  her  to  captivate 
men.  A  woman  should  remain  a  woman.  It  would 


88  ROUSSEAU 

be  folly  to  wish  for  the  cultivation  of  man's  qualities 
in  her.  Rousseau,  who,  on  so  many  other  points 
forestalled  the  tendencies  and  innovations  of  the 
modern  mind,  can  in  no  wise  be  considered  an  expert 
in  what  is  nowadays  called  " woman's  rights.'7 
Nothing  would  have  offended  him  more  than  the 
claim  to  mingle  and  assimilate  the  two  sexes  in 
the  same  habits  and  functions.  The  modelling  of 
woman's  education  and  life  on  man's  would,  to  him, 
have  seemed  an  aberration,  a  usurpation  of  the 
rights  of  the  stronger  sex,  and,  in  another  sense,  a 
profanation. 

It  is  more  especially  when  he  considers  woman's 
intellectual  faculties  that  Rousseau  shows  himself 
unjust  to  them.  He  admits  that  their  judgment  is 
earlier  formed,  but  he  asserts  that  they  soon  allow 
themselves  to  be  outdistanced.  They  have  not 
sufficient  attention  and  accuracy  of  mind  to  succeed 
in  the  exact  sciences : — we  may  note,  in  passing,  that 
Emile  gives  no  evidence  of  any  training  in  them, 
either.  —  Everything  that  tends  to  generalize  ideas 
is  outside  their  competence.  All  their  reflections 
should  centre  in  the  study  of  men,  or  in  agreeable 
acquirements  which  have  " taste"  as  their  object. 
Search  after  abstract  truths  is  not  suitable  for  them. 
No  women  philosophers  or  women  mathematicians 
then :  Rousseau  would  have  refused  another  Sophie 


ROUSSEAU  89 

—  Sophie  Germain  —  the  right  to  exist.  Works  of 
genius  are  beyond  them.  Is  it  not  true,  however, 
that,  as  a  novelist,  George  Sand,  to  mention  no 
others,  has  indeed  some  genius,  at  any  rate  as  much 
as  Rousseau?  ...  In  short,  feminine  studies 
should  relate  exclusively  to  practical  matters,  and 
Rousseau  would  willingly  repeat  Moliere's  words:  — 
Is  it  not  seemly,  and  for  many  reasons, 
That  a  woman  should  study  and  know  so  many  things.  .  .  . 

Sophie's  instruction,  then,  is  extremely  limited. 
It  could  not  be  otherwise  in  a  system  which,  on  the 
one  hand,  lowers  the  function  of  woman,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  disparages  her  intelligence  and  powers. 
How  can  she  be  asked  to  acquire  knowledge  which 
will  be  useless  to  her  in  her  role  of  humble  subordi- 
nation, or  to  undertake  studies  which  exceed  the 
capacity  of  her  mind  ?  In  her  library,  Rousseau  puts 
only  two  books,  Telemachus  —  and  even  this  is  out 
of  place,  if  it  be  true,  as  Rousseau  tells  us,  that  it 
excites  a  girPs  imagination  —  and  Comptes  fails,  by 
BarrSme.  Sophie  ought  to  understand  thoroughly 
the  keeping  of  household  accounts.  She  must  be  a 
true  housewife,  knowing  the  prices  of  provisions, 
superintending  her  servants,  such  a  wife  as  Xenophon 
had  already  pictured  the  partner  of  Ischomachus. 

In  her  youth,  Sophie  was  especially  engaged  in 
learning  needlework:  she  sews  and  embroiders. 


90  ROUSSEAU 

The  wife  of  Emile,  who  has  his  working  hours,  must 
not  be  capable  of  neglecting  manual  occupations. 
Rousseau  felt  the  importance  of  what  is  nowadays 
called  the  " household  education."  Sophie  cuts  out 
and  makes  her  own  dresses.  She  has  a  preference, 
it  is  true,  for  lace.  Why  is  this?  It  is  because 
there  is  no  form  of  needlework  which  "  gives  a  more 
pleasing  pose.77  Sophie  remains  somewhat  coquet- 
tish, even  in  her  household  occupations.  Rous- 
seau wishes  —  must  he  be  blamed  for  it  ?  —  a 
woman  to  be  always  attractive  and  elegant,  to  do 
everything  gracefully.  Nothing  should  detract  from 
the  charm  of  her  personal  appearance,  even  when  she 
is  cooking.  Somewhat  "foppish,77  Sophie  prefers 
burning  the  dinner  to  soiling  her  cuff.  Is  Emile,  who 
dines  badly  that  evening,  consoled  by  admiring  the 
spotless  cleanliness  of  Sophie7s  attire?  There  is, 
let  us  confess,  something  sickly  and  too  delicately 
refined  in  the  education  of  this  young  woman  who, 
for  example,  dislikes  gardening,  giving  as  a  reason 
that  "the  earth  seems  dirty  to  her.7' 

Sophie  cultivates  accomplishments,  less  for  her 
personal  benefit  than  to  contribute  later  to  her  hus- 
band7s  amusement.  She  has  a  nice  voice,  and  sings ; 
a  taste  for  music,  and  plays.  She  can  dance.  But 
from  all  other  points  of  view,  she  is  decidedly  an 
ignoramus.  A  little  arithmetic  —  enough  to  total 


ROUSSEAU  91 

up  the  household  expenses  —  has  been  taught  her : 
"Perhaps  women  should  before  all  learn  to  cipher," 
according  to  the  natural  method,  however:  "A 
little  girl  can  easily  be  persuaded  to  learn  arith- 
metic, if  care  be  taken  to  give  her  cherries  for  her 
lunch  only  on  condition  that  she  count  them." 
But  literature,  poetry,  and  history  she  knows  noth- 
ing of.  Bluestockings  are  an  affliction.  "  Every 
learned  girl  will  remain  single  all  her  life,  when  only 
men  of  sense  are  to  be  found."  Rousseau  would 
certainly  not  have  approved  of  the  creation  of  high 
schools,  nor  even  elementary  schools,  for  girls. 
"  There  are  no  colleges  for  women :  what  a  misfor- 
tune. .  .  .  Would  to  God  there  were  none  for 
boys.  .  .  ." 

However  insufficient  Emile's  instruction  may 
seem  to  us,  Sophie's  remains  on  a  yet  much  lower 
plane.  She  is  in  no  wise  the  enlightened  woman 
whose  action  is  necessary  to  regenerate  the  family 
and  society.  Rousseau,  though  he  detested  Paris, 
has  made  of  her  a  frivolous  Parisian,  who  is  rather 
a  grace  than  a  power  in  the  house,  a  charming  play- 
thing or  a  thing  of  fashion. 

It  is  not  alone  by  her  insufficient  instruction, 
which  practically  amounts  to  nothing,  that  Sophie 
differs  from  Emile;  it  is  also  in  the  nature  of  her 
education.  The  system  on  which  a  woman  is 


92  ROUSSEAU 

educated  should  be  different  from  that  adopted  in 
the  case  of  a  man.  Emile  does  not  make  his  entry 
into  society  till  he  is  about  twenty;  Sophie  is  ad- 
mitted at  a  very  early  age.  Before  becoming  a  wife 
and  mother,  she  must  be  acquainted  with  society 
and  life.  Reversing  the  usual  practice  by  which  a 
girl  is  kept  in  almost  cloistered  seclusion,  and  a 
woman  is  thrown  into  the  whirlpool  of  society  life, 
Rousseau  wishes  Sophie  to  go  often  to  balls,  plays, 
suppers,  accompanied  by  her  mother,  of  course; 
but  once  married,  she  shuts  herself  up  in  the  peace  of 
domestic  life.  Here  we  have  quite  a  fresh  inspira- 
tion, a  scheme  of  education  in  the  English  or  Ameri- 
can style.  If  Sophie  is  shown  society,  it  is,  however, 
that  she  may  be  made  to  feel  its  emptiness  and  vice, 
and  may  be  sickened  of  it  forever.  Is  it  quite 
certain  that  this  precocious  emancipation  would  give 
the  results  that  Rousseau  expects  ?  Let  us  praise 
him,  nevertheless,  for  having  introduced  the  ele- 
ments of  gayety,  good  temper,  and  liberty,  into  a 
girl's  life.  Sophie  is  merry  and  "skittish";  she 
is  not  to  live  "like  a  grandmother." 

Another  difference:  from  the  earliest  years  of 
her  infancy,  religion  will  be  mentioned  to  Sophie. 
The  reason  which  Rousseau  gives  for  this  is  the 
very  one  which  we  advanced  against  him,  when  he 
delayed  for  Emile  this  religious  teaching  which  he 


ROUSSEAU  93 

hastens  for  Sophie.  If  we  had  to  wait  until  a  woman , 
was  able  to  conceive  a  true  idea  of  religion,  "to  dis-/ 
cuss  these  deep  questions  methodically,  we  should] 
run  a  risk  of  never  mentioning  it  to  her."  This  is, 
then,  only  a  fresh  proof  of  the  little  esteem  which 
Rousseau  professed  for  feminine  intelligence.  Sub- 
missive to  the  judgment  of  others,  Sophie  blindly 
accepts  her  mother's  religion.  "Every  girl  ought 
to  have  the  religion  of  her  mother,  and  every  wife 
that  of  her  husband."  Opinion  and  authority,  so 
boldly  expelled  from  fcmile's  education,  resume  their 
sovereign  sway  when  Sophie  is  in  question.  "Opin- 
ion," says  Rousseau,  emphatically  "is  with  men  the 
tomb  of  virtue,  with  women  it  is  its  throne" :  which 
is  to  say  that,  in  their  beliefs  as  in  their  behavior, 
women  are  subject  to  the  opinion  of  others.  Wom- 
en's religion,  moreover,  is  confined  "in  the  nar- 
row circle  of  dogmas  which  derive  from  morality." 
She  is  simple  and  reasonable, — "reasonable"  is 
a  word  already  used  by  Mme.  de  Maintenon. 
"Persuade  her  well  that  no  knowledge  is  useful 
except  such  as  teaches  us  well-doing.  Do  not  make 
theologians  and  logicians  of  your  daughters:  teach 
them  such  of  heaven's  things  alone  as  are  of  use  for 
human  wisdom.  .  .  ."  Morality  is  the  essential 
part  of  religion,  and  we  serve  God  by  good  actions. 
At  times  Rousseau  hesitates,  desisting  from  keep- 


94  ROUSSEAU 

ing  woman  in  her  state  of  subordination ;  he  seems  to 
perceive  that,  to  be  a  wife  and  mother,  Sophie  needs 
a  little  more  instruction.  "  There  are/'  says  he, 
"only  two  classes  in  humanity :  those  who  think  and 
those  who  do  not  think. "  And  guiding  Emile  in 
the  choice  of  a  wife,  he  exhorts  him  to  put  aside  all 
consideration  of  fortune  or  social  rank,  "to  take 
for  his  wife  even  the  hangman's  daughter,  so  little 
should  he  care  for  class."  What  does  matter, 
is  that  a  wife  should  think,  know  how  to  bring  up 
her  children,  and  be  able  to  live  in  communion  of 
ideas  with  her  husband.  In  that  case,  however, 
is  it  not  evident  that  it  would  be  indispensable  to 
arrange  for  her  a  wider  and  more  thorough  instruc- 
tion? "It  is  the  husband/'  replies  Rousseau,  "who 
will  teach  her  everything  and  be  her  instructor.  .  .  ." 
I  admit  that  he  will  complete  and  widen  her  in- 
struction, but  on  condition  that,  already  as  a  girl, 
she  has  been  initiated  into  the  things  of  the  mind. 
Let  her  be  forbidden  to  read  novels,  —  "never  did 
a  chaste  girl  read  a  novel/'  —  this  is  already  very 
severe ;  but  how  sanction  her  never  having  a  serious 
book  in  her  hands  and  being  as  ignorant  of  literature 
as  of  science,  "fatal  science  "  ?  This  is,  nevertheless, 
really  the  conclusion  come  to  by  Rousseau,  who 
seemed  to  fear  that  by  instructing  woman  she 
might  be  made  man's  equal,  and  that  "the  pre- 


ROUSSEAU  95 

eminence  which  nature  gives  to  the  husband  might 
thus  be  conveyed  to  the  wife.77 

It  is  true  that  Rousseau,  if  he  abases  woman  on 
the  one  hand,  exalts  her  on  the  other.  "  Women,77 
says  he,  "have  a  supernatural  talent  for  governing 
men.  .  .  ,77  But  this  so-called  supernatural  talent 
is  nothing  but  their  grace  and  beauty,  and,  in  short, 
the  very  natural  power  which  they  exercise  over 
man's  senses.  "The  best  households,77  he  says 
again,  "are  those  in  which  the  wife  has  most  au- 
thority.77 Yes;  but  in  his  theories,  this  authority  is 
not  that  of  a  cultured  intelligence  and  tested  reason; 
it  is  simply  a  rule  founded  on  gentleness,  made  last- 
ing by  the  little  methods  which  a  wife7s  ingenuity  or 
indulgence  suggest  to  her.  It  ifc  by  her  caresses 
that  Sophie  orders,  it  is  by  tears  that  she  threatens. 
Mme.  Roland's  father,  discussing  the  choice  of  a  hus- 
band with  her  one  day,  said  to  her,  "I  understand 
you  would  like  to  subjugate  some  one  who  thinks 
himself  the  master,  doing  everything  that  you  wish. 
.  .  ,77  Sophie  is  of  the  same  school.  She  appears 
to  obey,  but  in  fact  she  reigns  and  governs,  and  her 
sovereignty  is  due  only  to  the  seductions  of  her 
sex. 

A  strange  book,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  this 
romance  of  Sophie's  education.  In  it  charming 
things  are  mingled  with  pedantic  dissertations. 


96  ROUSSEAU 

Delicate  thoughts  are  near  neighbors  to  declama- 
tions that  might  be  described  as  the  ramblings  of  a 
disordered  brain.  In  it  the  highest  lessons  of  virtue 
alternate  with  loose  passages  of  vicious  gallantry, 
and  with  rather  free  observations.  The  eulogy  of 
Spartan  or  Roman  manners  is  followed  by  pages  in 
which  one  guesses  that  Rousseau  found  as  much 
pleasure  in  reading  Brantome  as  in  reading  the  Bible, 
—  which  he  had  read  right  through  more  than  six 
times,  during  the  sleeplessness  of  his  nights  of  sick- 
ness. We  must  not  require  from  Rousseau  the  lofty 
purity  of  sentiment  which  the  mission  of  woman's 
educator  demands.  How  can  we  be  touched  by  his 
enthusiasm  for  decency,  modesty,  and  seemliness, 
when  we  have  just  heard  him  say  that,  "  Sophie 
does  not  display  her  charms ;  on  the  contrary,  she 
covers  them  up,  but  in  covering  them  up  she  knows 
how  to  suggest  them77?  Or  again,  "In  Sophie's 
simple  and  modest  attire,  everything  seems  to  have 
been  put  in  its  place  only  to  be  removed  piece  by 
piece.  .  .  ."  We  do  not  know,  sometimes,  when 
reading  Emile,  whether  we  are  in  presence  of  a  severe 
moralist  or  a  man  of  gallant  adventures.  What  is 
not  subject  to  doubt,  is  that  the  too  realistic  memory 
of  Mme.  de  Warens,  or  the  ideal  representation  of 
Mme.  Sophie  d'Houdetot,  —  whom  he  loved  too 
much  "to  wish  to  possess  her/7  —  accompany  and 


ROUSSEAU  97 

partly  direct  Rousseau's  pen  when  he  is  sketching 
Sophie's  portrait.  .  .  . 

Do  not  let  us,  however,  finish  with  this  unfavor- 
able impression.  If  Sophie  is  not  the  strong,  sen- 
sible, and  enlightened  woman  that  we  could  wish 
her  to  be,  if  she  is  rather  a  "weak,  silly  woman/7 
more  graceful  than  reasonable,  seeking,  above  all,  to 
please,  not  disdaining,  in  her  coquetry,  to  display 
her  white  hand  and  shapely  foot,  let  us,  nevertheless, 
salute  in  her  a  pleasant  wife,  who  can  retain  her 
husband's  affections,  a  devoted  mother,  who  feeds 
and  brings  up  her  children;  lastly,  one  who  compen- 
sates by  rare  merits  for  the  imperfections  of  her 
incomplete  education.  Of  her  independent  life  and 
her  own  personality,  Rousseau  takes  no  heed.  It 
is  conjugal  intimacy  alone  which  can  make  of  two 
beings  united  for  life  one  moral  person.  Woman  is, 
then,  only  a  part,  a  fragment  of  this  moral  person. 
As  a  compensation  she  will  be  the  most  seductive  of 
companions  for  the  man  whose  complement  she  is. 
Sophie  is  not  one  of  "those  who  banish  from  mar- 
riage everything  that  can  be  agreeable  to  men." 
She  is  not  a  wearisome  devotee,  enslaved  by  those 
rigorous  dogmas  which,  "by  pushing  duties  to  absurd 
limits,  make  them  impracticable  and  vain."  Rous- 
seau asserts  that  in  his  time  "so  much  had  been  done 
to  prevent  wives  from  being  amiable,  that  husbands 


98  ROUSSEAU 

had  been  made  indifferent."  To  the  scolding, 
sullen  wife  he  opposes  one  who  is  smiling  and  cheer- 
ful, who  wishes  to  please  and  succeeds  in  doing  so ; 
who  makes  the  obligation  of  fidelity  pleasant  and 
easy  for  her  life's  companion.  One  may  be  tempted 
to  wonder  how,  after  all  the  evil  that  he  spoke  of 
women,  Rousseau  met  among  them  so  many  im- 
passioned admirers.  It  is  because,  if  he  did  not 
assign  to  them  their  true  rank,  he  at  least  flat- 
tered them;  he  encouraged  them  in  their  tendency 
to  rule  by  the  power  of  their  natural  charms 
alone.  He  liked,  and  cajoled  them  a  great  deal. 
Observe  with  what  satisfaction  he  forgets  himself 
when  depicting  the  early  love  passages  between  Emile 
and  Sophie,  what  delicious  trifles  occupy  him  in  the 
portrait  which  he  paints  of  his  heroine.  To  figure 
her  as  perfect,  he  draws  upon  all  the  races  of  human- 
ity. Sophie  has  the  temperament  of  an  Italian,  the 
pride  of  a  Spaniard,  and  the  sensibility  of  an  English- 
woman. All  that  she  lacks  to  be  perfect  is,  perhaps, 
the  good  sense  and  sedate  simplicity  of  an  instructed 
and  cultured  Frenchwoman.  She  also  is  a  pupil  of 
nature:  "She  makes  use  only  of  scent  which  comes 
from  flowers."  —  "I  never  praise  her  so  much  as 
when  she  is  simply  clothed.  .  .  ."  There  are  wise 
and  beautiful  sayings  in  the  confusion  of  the  fifth 
book  of  Emile;  as,  for  example:  "Show  woman  in 


ROUSSEAU  99 

her  duties  the  very  source  of  her  pleasures  and 
foundation  of  her  rights.  Is  it  so  difficult  to  love  so 
as  to  be  loved,  to  make  oneself  amiable  so  as  to  be 
happy,  to  make  oneself  esteemed  so  as  to  be  obeyed, 
and  to  respect  oneself  so  as  to  be  respected? 
.  .  . 77  Many  other  passages  explain,  without  how- 
ever justifying  it  entirely,  the  opinion  of  a  German 
educational  historian,  Frederic  Dittes,  who  went 
so  far  as  to  say  that  he  considered  the  fifth  part  of 
Emile  to  be  "the  best  book  which  has  been  written 
on  woman's  education.77  And,  at  all  events,  Sophie, 
despite  the  gaps  in  her  education,  is  already  the 
modern  woman,  created  not  for  the  church  and  the 
convent,  but  for  family  life ;  despite  her  defects,  she 
possesses  this  precious  and  fresh  quality,  that  her 
virtue  is  amiable. 


VI 


THE  influence  of  Rousseau  and  his  pedagogic 
thought  was  preponderant,  as  we  shall  see  presently, 
chiefly  in  Germany.  But  the  fame  of  Emile  was  uni- 
versal, and  the  echoes  of  it  have  not  yet  died  away. 
As  a  man  who  sought  after  glory,  and  whose  gloomy 
temper  took  umbrage  at  everything,  Rousseau  com- 
plained that  Emile  did  not  obtain  the  same  success 
as  his  other  writings.  He  was  truly  hard  to  please ! 
.  .  .  The  anger  of  some,  the  ardent  sympathy  of 
others ;  on  the  one  hand,  parliamentary  decrees  con- 
demning the  book  and  issuing  a  warrant  for  the 
author's  arrest,  the  thunders  of  the  church  and  the 
famous  mandate  of  the  archbishop  of  Paris ;  on  the 
other  hand,  the  applause  of  philosophers,  of  Clairaut, 
Duclos,  and  d'Alembert,  .  .  .  what  more,  then,  did 
he  want  ?  Emile  was  burned  at  Paris  and  Geneva ; 
but  it  was  read  with  passion ;  it  was  twice  translated 
in  London,  an  honor  which  no  French  work  had 
received  up  till  then.  In  truth,  never  did  a  book 
make  more  noise  and  thrust  itself  so  much  on  the 
attention  of  men.  By  its  defects,  no  less  than  by 

100 


ROUSSEAU  101 

its  qualities,  by  the  inspired  and  prophetic  character 
of  its  style,  as  well  as  by  the  paradoxical  audacity 
of  its  ideas,  Emile  swayed  opinion  and  stirred  up  the 
most  generous  parts  of  the  human  soul.  It  were 
too  difficult  to  enumerate  all  the  imitations  and 
counterfeits  which  have  been  prompted  by  Rous- 
seau's powerful  influence,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
refutations,  contradictions,  and  criticisms.  The 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century  witnessed  the  appear- 
ance of  quite  a  succession,  a  posterity  of  Emiles: 
first,  Anti-Emiles,  then  Christian  Emiles,  Corrected 
Emites,  New  Emiles,  Emiles  retouched,  improved, 
shortened,  amplified,  and  even  Emiles  converted  to 
social  life.  In  many  a  place  were  attempts  made  to 
put  into  practice  the  education  extolled  by  Rous- 
seau ;  children  were  brought  up  in  the  Jean-Jacques 
style.  Fashion  took  part  in  it.  There  were  also 
" dresses  in  the  Jean- Jacques  style/7  of  which  it  was 
said,  in  peculiar  language,  that  they  were  "  analo- 
gous to  that  author's  principles." 

Rousseau  had  already  carried  utopianism  very  far ; 
it  was,  however,  carried  still  farther.  Let  us  mention, 
for  example,  a  very  curious  book,  which  is,  as  it  were, 
a  caricature  of  Emile,  UEleve  de  la  nature,  by  Gas- 
pard  de  Beaurieu.  However  silly  this  utopianism 
may  have  been,  it  passed  through  no  less  than  eight 
editions,  between  1763  and  1794.  So  as  the  better 


102  ROUSSEAU 

to  insure  his  Emile's  isolation,  de  Beaurieu  had  the 
idea  of  shutting  him  up  in  a  wooden  cage  till  he 
reached  the  age  of  fifteen;  then  he  landed  him  on 
a  desert  island.  .  .  .  Nothing  more  extravagant 
could  be  conceived.  And  yet  Rousseau  did  not 
disclaim  his  fantastic  disciple:  he  loved  his  para- 
doxes to  the  extent  of  excusing  and  approving  their 
exaggeration.  In  a  letter  of  the  25th  of  May,  1764, 
he  wrote:  "I  have  read  UEleve  de  la  nature.  One 
cannot  think  with  more  intelligence,  or  write  more 
pleasantly.  .  .  ."  Without  confusion,  Rousseau 
looked  at  himself  in  the  magnifying  mirror  in  which 
an  indiscreet  admirer  had  already  exaggerated  his 
dreams.  It  is  true  that  he  added,  not  without  a 
touch  of  irony:  "I  advise  M.  de  Beaurieu  to  always 
keep  more  to  subjects  which  can  be  dealt  with 
by  descriptions  and  representations,  than  to  those 
needing  discussion  and  analysis.  ...  An  agricul- 
tural treatise  would  suit  him  perfectly.  .  .  ." 

Happily,  Rousseau  found  more  serious  imitators. 
The  end  would  never  be  reached  if  we  mentioned  all 
the  great  men  who,  in  literature  or  politics,  make 
for  him  in  posterity  a  long  train  of  admirers.  How 
many  revolutionists  fed  on  the  maxims  of  Contrat 
social,  and  felt  the  political  influence  of  Rousseau, 
a  " disastrous"  influence,  however,  according  to 
Auguste  Comte,  who  describes  his  doctrines  as 


ROUSSEAU  103 

"anarchical"?  Are  not  Chateaubriand,  George 
Sand,  and  many  others,  the  progeny  of  the  author  of 
La  Nouvelle  Heloise?  .  .  .  But  we  have  only  to 
occupy  ourselves  in  this  place  with  educators,  and 
it  is  perhaps  on  them  that  the  salutary  action  of 
Rousseau's  thought  has  most  usefully  been  exercised. 

The  revolution  of  1789  did  not  last  long  enough  to 
make  it  possible  that  anything  of  permanence  in  the 
matter  of  education  should  be  accomplished.  But 
Rousseau's  inspiration  is  apparent  in  the  majority 
of  the  projects  which  it  improvised  without  ever 
succeeding  in  putting  them  into  operation.  The 
chimerical  plans  of  Saint-Just  and  Lepelletier  de 
Saint-Fargeau!  emanate  directly  from  Emile.  In 
year  III,  Marie-Joseph  Chenier  asked  "that  the 
method  pursued  by  Rousseau  in  Emile's  education 
should  be  applied  to  the  entire  nation." 

Rousseau's  teachings,  in  truth,  obtained  more 
theoretical  admiration  than  practical  application. 
It  has  never  been  proposed,  for  example,  to  bring 
into  existence  those  Schools  of  the  fatherland  imagined 
by  the  gentle  and  sentimental  Bernardin  de  Saint- 
Pierre,  the  cheerful  Utopian,  idyllic  reformer,  and 
nature  enthusiast.  At  least  it  must  be  admitted 
that  in  suppressing  punishments  and  rewards  in 
his  educational  scheme,  in  removing  the  motive 
of  emulation,  and  on  yet  many  other  points,  Ber- 


104  ROUSSEAU 

nardin  merely  copies  Rousseau,  whose  friend,  con- 
fidant, and  consoler  he  had  been. 

Women  have  had  a  special  fondness  for  Rous- 
seau. Who  loved  and  extolled  him  more  than  Mme. 
Roland,  " Jean- Jacques7  daughter/'  or  the  "Jean- 
Jacques  of  women,"  as  she  has  been  called?  In 
1777,  she  wrote  to  one  of  her  friends :  "I  love  Rous- 
seau beyond  expression.  ...  I  carry  Rousseau  in 
my  heart.  .  .  ."  She  especially  esteemed  him  for 
having  revealed  to  her  domestic  happiness  and  the 
ineffable  delights  which  may  be  tasted  in  family 
life.  For  her  part,  Mme.  de  Stael  greets  Emile  as 
"an  admirable  book,  which  puts  envy  to  shame  after 
exciting  it,"  and  she  tells  us  that,  in  her  youth,  she 
fell  in  love  with  negative  education.  Rousseau's 
influence  is  perceptible  on  even  those  women  educa- 
tors who  most  contested  the  conclusions  of  Emile. 
The  principal  work  of  Mme.  de  Genlis,  Adele  et  Theo- 
dore, often  recalls  Emile  et  Sophie:  the  indirect 
lessons,  the  artificial  and  prepared  scenes,  dear  to 
Rousseau,  are  found  again  in  it.  Mme.  Necker  de 
Saussure,  though  opposed  to  the  principles  of  eigh- 
teenth-century philosophy,  often  draws  inspiration 
from  him,  after  contradicting  him.  Like  him,  she 
sees  in  the  child  a  being  apart,  whose  education  has 
rules  of  its  own.  She  holds  again,  after  him,  the 
idea  of  a  progressive  development  of  the  faculties, 


ROUSSEAU  105 

and  consequently  that  of  the  sequence  of  methods 
appropriate  to  the  age  and  powers  of  the  child. 

It  has  been  said  of  Rousseau  that  he  introduced 
into  French  literature  the  genius  of  the  north,  that 
he  was  of  a  German  or  English  temperament.  I 
do  not  know  whether  this  view  is  very  accurate. 
Rousseau  knew  nothing  of  Germany.  He  did  not 
like  the  English.  "I  have  no  penchant  for  England. 
.  .  ."  He  was  brought  especially  under  French 
influence  during  his  wanderings  across  France  and 
his  long  sojourn  in  Paris;  and,  indeed,  nourished  by 
classical  reading,  he  may  quite  as  properly  be  re- 
garded as  a  representative  of  the  extreme  sensibility 
of  southern  races.  What,  however,  is  certain,  is 
that  this  child  of  Geneva,  if  not  of  "Teutonic" 
genius,  became  Teutonic  by  his  influence.  As  the 
lamented  Joseph  Texte  has  shown  in  his  fine  book, 
Jean-Jacques  Rousseau  et  les  origines  du  cosmo- 
politisme  litteraire,  his  light  has  gone  forth  into  all 
lands.  The  success  of  his  works  and  the  propaga- 
tion of  his  ideas  made  him  a  cosmopolitan. 

There  is  hardly  a  German  writer  but  has  borne 
him  favorable  testimony,  usually,  indeed,  enthusi- 
astic homage.  Basedow,  a  pedagogue  who  had  in 
his  time  a  great  but  little  deserved  reputation, 
swears  only  by  Rousseau,  whose  theories  he  uses, 
in  his  way,  with  frenzied  zeal.  Having  no  son,  he 


106  ROUSSEAU 

finds  consolation  in  calling  his  daughter  "Emilie." 
Lavater  shows  himself  as  eager  as  Basedow  for  the 
reformation  of  education  in  the  direction  of  the 
doctrines  of  Emile.  But  here  are  weightier  authori- 
ties. Lessing  declares  that  he  cannot  pronounce 
the  name  of  Rousseau  "without  respect."  Schiller 
extols  "the  new  Socrates,  who  of  Christians  wished 
to  make  men."  Goethe  calles  Emile  "the  teacher's 
gospel."  Kant  affirms  that  no  book  "moved  him 
so  deeply."  He  read  it  with  such  avidity,  that,  in 
his  strictly  ordered  life,  "the  regularity  of  his  daily 
walks  was  for  a  time  disturbed."  In  his  little 
Treatise  on  Pedagogics,  many  principles  are  bor- 
rowed from  Emile:  for  him  also  nature  is  good. 
Herder,  who  has  been  named  "the  German  Rous- 
seau," cries  out,  "Come,  Rousseau,  be  thou  my 
guide";  and  in  a  letter  to  his  beloved  Caroline,  he 
acclaims  Emile  as  "a^'divine  work."  In  his  Levana, 
Jean-Paul  Richter  says  that,  of  all  previous  works 
to  which  he  feels  himself  indebted,  it  is  to  fimile 
that  he  must  assign  the  front  rank,  that  "no  pre- 
ceding work  can  be  compared  to  it."  But  it  is  to 
Pestalozzi  especially  that  is  due  the  honor  of 
developing  and  popularizing,  whilst  attempting  to 
apply  them,  the  methods  of  Rousseau,  whose  works 
had  early  fixed  his  imagination:  "The  system  of 
liberty  founded  ideally  by  the  author  of  Emile 


ROUSSEAU  107 

excited  in  me  a  boundless  enthusiasm."  Lastly, 
Froebel,  who  wished  to  replace  books  by  things, 
who  had  nothing  so  much  at  heart  as  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  child's  spontaneity,  deserves  a  place  in 
the  golden  book  of  Rousseau's  disciples.  And  it 
is  not  only  in  the  great  men  of  Germany  that  Rous- 
seau inspired  new  sentiments:  thinkers  of  lesser 
importance,  Jacobi,  Heinse,  Klinger,  and  yet  many 
others,  took  part  in  this  adoring  veneration  which 
Germany  professed  for  the  French  educator. 

Rousseau  has  been  somewhat  less  appreciated  in 
England.  There  also,  however,  despite  the  scandal 
of  his  ridiculous  rupture  with  Hume,  he  found  im- 
mediate favor  and  success.  Emile  was  translated 
in  London  as  soon  as  it  appeared;  and  a  second 
edition  was  soon  called  for.  In  1789  David  Will- 
iams said,  "Rousseau  is  in  full  possession  of  the 
public  attention."  It  is  true  that  opinion  was 
occupied  with  the  political  theories  of  Contrat  social 
rather  than  the  pedagogical  conceptions  of  Emile. 
Somewhat  neglected  for  a  century,  Rousseau  was 
again  brought  forward  by  Mr.  John  Morley,  and 
also  by  a  distinguished  educational  historian,  Robert 
Quick.  The  latter  opines  that  "the  truths  contained 
in  6mile  will  survive  the  fantastic  forms  in  which 
the  author  enveloped  them."  In  his  eyes,  Emile  is 
"the  most  influential  book  ever  written  on  educa- 


108  ROUSSEAU 

tion."  This  is  also  the  opinion  of  John  Morley, 
who  states  that  Emile  is  "one  of  the  seminal  books 
in  the  history  of  literature."  Again  we  have  George 
Eliot's  avowal:  "Rousseau  has  breathed  life  into 
my  soul,  and  awakened  new  faculties  in  me.  .  .  ." 
And  lastly,  is  it  not  true  that  Rousseau's  principle, 
the  return  to  nature,  dominates  the  pedogogics  of 
Herbert  Spencer,  the  most  brilliant  educational 
theorist  of  contemporary  England? 

Apparently  it  is  in  America  that  Rousseau  has 
met  with  least  sympathy,  and  we  must  not  be  much 
surprised  at  this.  How  could  this  dreamer,  this 
indolent  idler,  this  heroic  representative  of  the 
sensibility  of  the  Latin  races,  be  gifted  with  the 
power  of  pleasing  the  virile,  rugged  minds  and  busy, 
practical  temperaments  of  the  citizens  of  the  New 
World?  In  the  study  which  he  recently  devoted  to 
him,  Mr.  Thomas  Davidson  admits  his  discomfiture. 
On  examination,  the  most  vaunted  theories  of  Rous- 
seau have  disappointed  him.  He  did  not  find  in 
them  the  firm  and  solid  substance  which  he  expected 
to  obtain  from  a  study  of  Emile.  And  yet,  when 
closely  examined,  American  education,  as  we  see  it 
practically  developing  at  the  present  time,  has  more 
than  one  point  of  resemblance  with  the  ideal  peda- 
gogics of  Rousseau.  One  of  the  leaders  of  American 
education,  Dr.  Charles  W.  Eliot,  the  revered  president 


ROUSSEAU  109 

of  Harvard  University,  summarizing  the  progress 
accomplished  in  his  country  during  the  nineteenth 
century,  draws  attention  especially  to  the  intro- 
duction of  two  essential  things  into  the  school  cur- 
riculum: nature  study  and  manual  training.  The 
American  child  is  no  longer  a  logical  phantom,  stuffed 
with  words  and  abstractions,  but  a  living  creature, 
working  with  hands  as  well  as  mind.  .  .  .  But  is 
not  all  this  Rousseau  ?  Similarly,  Dr.  Eliot  points 
out  that  an  improvement  has  come  about  in  dis- 
cipline. In  religion,  love  has  been  substituted  for 
fear;  in  politics,  people  have  begun  to  understand 
that  the  government  of  nations  should  no  longer  re- 
main what  for  thousands  of  years  it  has  been,  —  the 
work  of  an  absolute  and  arbitrary  will;  that  in  its 
place  must  be  put  the  free  government  of  the  people 
by  the  people ;  and  consequently  people  have  come 
to  think  that  the  modern  and  more  accurate  con- 
ception of  a  good  government  for  a  nation's  citizens 
held  lessons  for  us  on  the  subject  of  a  good  govern- 
ment for  children,  who  also  should  be  freed,  as  far 
as  possible,  from  the  yoke  of  the  old  tutelage,  and 
trained  in  self-government.  .  .  .  But  is  not  this 
also  Rousseau? 

Without  our  suspecting  it,  Rousseau's  pedagogical 
spirit  has  insinuated  itself  into  and  penetrated  the 
methods  of  teaching  and  the  educational  practices 


110  ROUSSEAU 

which  the  present  time  endeavors  more  and  more  to 
honor.  Go  into  one  of  the  infant  schools :  object- 
lessons  are  given;  the  children  are  shown  the  things 
themselves,  and  the  method  of  observation  and  direct 
intuition  is  put  into  practice.  Make  obeisance: 
Rousseau  it  is  who  inspired  these  methods.  .  .  . 
Pay  a  visit  to  one  of  those  English  colleges  which 
M.  Demolins  is  attempting  to  imitate  and  popularize 
in  France :  there  you  will  find  masters  who  are  both 
guardians  and  professors,  never  leaving  their  pupils, 
who,  like  them,  live  in  the  college  from  morning  till 
night;  how  can  we  avoid  recognizing  in  them  the 
actual  descendants  of  the  imaginary  tutor  to  whom 
Rousseau  confided  the  care  of  fCmile  ?  .  .  .  Enter 
one  of  those  American  schools  in  which  the  abuse  of 
books  and  manuals  is  condemned,  and  in  which  the 
mental  slavery  of  mechanical  instruction  has  been 
exchanged  for  methods  of  intellectual  freedom,  so 
that  the  child  shall  acquire  what  it  is  requisite  to 
know  as  far  as  possible  by  himself  and  by  his  per- 
sonal effort.  In  this,  again,  you  will  be  forced  to 
acknowledge  the  hand  of  Rousseau.  .  .  .  Where- 
soever discipline  has  become  more  liberal,  where 
active  methods  are  supreme,  and  where  the  child  is 
kept  constantly  in  a  state  of  interest,  lively  curiosity, 
and  sustained  attention,  his  dignity  being  at  the 
same  time  respected,  there  we  may  say  Rousseau 
has  passed  by. 


ROUSSEAU  111 

Utopias  perish,  but  the  truth  endures.  The  spirit 
survives  the  letter.  We  cannot,  indeed,  hope  to 
derive  from  Rousseau's  pedagogics  a  definite  and 
final  system  of  methods  and  procedure.  But  what 
is  perhaps  better,  he  handed  on  to  his  successors  and 
still  imparts  to  all  who  read  him  a  spark,  at  least, 
of  the  flame  which  burned  in  him.  As  Mme.  de  Stael 
said,  he  has  perhaps  discovered  nothing,  but  he  has 
set  everything  ablaze.  His  eloquence  was  the  most 
powerful  appeal  ever  addressed  to  parents  and 
masters  to  exhort  them  to  take  their  task  as  educa- 
tors seriously.  With  him,  education  became  a 
sacred  mission,  a  sublime  ministry.  Into  educa- 
tional questions  he  instilled  a  spirit  of  life,  a  move- 
ment of  passion,  unknown  to  the  cold,  dry  peda- 
gogues who  had  dealt  with  such  questions  before 
him.  Henceforth  the  educator's  part  is  raised  and 
ennobled ;  and,  by  the  fire  of  his  enthusiasm,  Rous- 
seau stamped  the  science  and  art  of  rearing  men  with 
the  majesty  and  solemnity  of  a  kind  of  religious  reve- 
lation. 

And  as,  in  Rousseau's  works,  time,  eliminating 
his  mistakes,  maintains  and  develops  the  living  seed 
which  he  sowed  abundantly  in  the  field  of  education, 
so  with  the  man  himself,  in  his  character  and 
acts,  distance  and  the  flight  of  ages  hide  from  us 
defects  and  misdeeds,  which,  little  by  little,  return  to 


112  ROUSSEAU 

shadow,  in  order  to  let  us  see  only  his  qualities 
and  virtues. 

If  Rousseau  still  exercises  great  seduction  over  the 
human  intellect,  it  is  not  solely  by  virtue  of  the  force 
of  his  innovating  genius.  Neither  is  it  by  the  mere 
effect  of  his  style,  sometimes  somewhat  heavy,  but 
whence  at  every  moment  flashes  forth  the  lightning  ; 
that  style  which  earned  him  the  title  of  the  "king 
among  prose-writers."  It  is  because,  behind  the 
writer  and  thinker,  we  feel  the  pulsations  of  the  most 
sincere  heart  which  ever  throbbed  in  the  breast  of 
man.  Voltaire's  enmity  must  have  been  strong  indeed 
to  blind  him  to  such  a  degree  that  he  could  write :  "It 
is  useless  for  Rousseau  to  play  now  the  stoic  and  now 
the  cynic :  he  belies  himself  continually.  The  man 
is  factitious  from  head  to  foot."  The  opposite  is 
the  truth.  Rousseau's  great  charm,  the  secret  of  the 
irresistible  sympathy  which  he  inspires,  is  precisely 
that  he  yields  his  entire  self,  that  he  displays  him- 
self, as  it  were,  stripped  to  the  skin.  With  a  soul 
more  sensitive  than  meditative,  a  mind  more  aes- 
thetic than  philosophic,  he  did  not  know  that  self- 
possession,  that  mastery  of  a  firm,  cool  judgment, 
which  permits  a  thinker  to  control  the  turmoil 
of  sentiments  and  the  confusion  of  images,  so  as  to 
construct  and  organize  a  system  of  connected  and 
consistent  argument.  From  this  arises  the  hesita- 


ROUSSEAU  113 

tions  and  contradictions  of  his  thought.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  dreamer  guided  by  his  senses,  he  could 
offer  no  resistance  to  instinctive  impulses;  whence 
the  failings  of  his  moral  life,  failings,  moreover,  which 
we  are  aware  of  only  through  his  own  confession. 
Many  men  of  genius  have  doubtless  had  these  same 
passions  and  frailties;  they,  however,  have  hidden 
them  as  much  as  possible,  whilst  he  spread  them 
abroad  in  the  shameless  candor  of  his  Confessions. 

There  is  nothing  fixed  or  precise  in  Rousseau's 
moral  philosophy.  Rules  of  conduct  strongly 
enough  established  to  suffice  for  the  rearing  of  men 
cannot  be  found  in  it.  There  is  something  of  the 
stoic  in  him,  but  the  epicurean  gets  the  upper  hand. 
'The  man  who  has  lived  most/7  says  he,  "is  not  the 
f  one  who  counts  most  years,  but  the  one  who  has  most 
felt  life."  To  enjoy  life,  that  is  the  object  he  pre- 
scribes for  Emile.  It  is  true  that  Rousseau  im- 
mediately writes:  "Shall  I  add  that  his  object  is 
also  to  do  good,  when  he  is  able  ?  No ;  for  that 
is  itself  to  enjoy  life.  ..."  The  accomplishment 
of  duty  is  presented,  not  as  a  law  and  an  obligation, 
but  as  a  source  of  pleasure.  The  stoic  reappears 
when  Rousseau  advises  the  limitation  of  desires, 
when  he  says  that  the  essentially  good  man  is  he  who 
has  least  needs,  who  is  self-sufficing.  In  this  respect, 
Rousseau  generally  acted  in  accordance  with  his 


114  ROUSSEAU 

maxims.  He  was  intemperate  at  times.  In  his 
youth  he  pilfered  from  M.  de  Mably's  cellars  bottles 
of  a  white  wine  for  which  he  had  a  liking,  and  many 
other  peccadillos  could  be  mentioned.  But  taking 
his  life  as  a  whole,  he  was  sober,  simple  in  his  tastes, 
an  enemy  of  luxury,  temperate,  and  even  austere. 

What  he  lacked,  more  than  lofty  and  noble  inspi- 
rations, was  the  necessary  energy  to  keep  to  them. 
His  senses  and  imagination  governed  his  existence. 
Could  it  be  otherwise,  considering  the  education 
which  he  had  received  ?  While  yet  a  child,  his  father 
read  novels  with  him  till  morning;  and  only  when 
he  heard  the  swallow's  notes  did  he  say,  "Let  us 
go  to  bed,  Jean-Jacques !  .  .  . "  A  friend  of  virtue 
rather  than  virtuous,  agitated  rather  than  active, 
a  slave  to  his  sensations  when  he  would  fain  have 
been  the  apostle  of  liberty,  tossed  about  by  the  ca- 
prices of  his  fancy  when  he  claimed  to  be  establishing 
among  men  the  reign  of  sovereign  reason,  capable 
of  being  at  times  a  hero  of  courage  and  disinterested- 
ness, to  descend  afterwards  to  unworthy  and  even 
criminal  actions;  sentimentalist  and  idealist,  yet 
often  allowing  I  know  not  what  coarse  echo  of  erotic 
sensuality  to  be  heard  in  his  most  poetic  hymns  to 
love  and  beauty,  in  the  torrent  of  his  life  he  mingled 
muddy  waters  with  the  purest  streams.  At  times  in- 
toxicated with  sublime  thoughts,  he  nevertheless 


ROUSSEAU  115 

evaded  the  strictest  and  pleasantest  duties ;  and  he 
has  not  absolved  himself  from  his  faults  by  a  too  pla- 
tonic  enthusiasm  for  righteousness.  Too  often  has  he 
lived  selfishly,  seeking  the  solitude  which  was  sooth- 
ing to  his  reveries,  flying  the  men  who  troubled  his 
pride.  He  was  imbued  with  his  own  opinion  to  the 
point  of  willingly  parting  company  with  common 
sense,  and  was  so  elated  with  his  personality  that 
he  thought  himself  an  exceptional  being,  of  a  race 
apart:  "Why  did  Providence  cause  me  to  be  born 
among  men,  having  made  me  of  a  species  different 
from  them?  .  .  ." 

Yet  this  somewhat  wild  misanthrope  has  contrib- 
uted to  a  greater  love  of  life  by  introducing  into 
it  more  liberty,  joy,  and  faith;  by  arousing  and 
strengthening,  according  to  Mme.  Roland's  phrase, 
"all  the  affections  which  attach  us  to  existence": 
devotion  to  humanity,  enthusiasm  for  the  ideal, 
friendship  and  love.  He  has  been  generous  and 
helpful.  His  dream  was  the  happiness  of  man: 
"Make  your  paradise  upon  earth,  whilst  awaiting 
the  other."  He  worked  for  a  fresh,  rejuvenated 
society,  freed  from  the  prejudices  of  the  past :  "Woe 
to  thee,  0  thou  stream  of  custom!"  In  an  age  of 
courtiers,  he  courageously  safeguarded  his  right  of 
free  speech,  and  under  an  oppressive  rule  he  main- 
tained his  independence  at  the  cost  of  his  happiness. 


116  ROUSSEAU 

He  was  a  citizen.  One  of  Geneva's  sons,  he  drew 
from  the  traditions  of  his  first  fatherland  the  love 
of  liberty,  the  republican  pride:  "With  us,  maxims 
are  imbibed  with  the  mother's  milk."  In  a  society 
of  sceptics  and  profligates,  he  was  simple  and  a  be- 
liever. Literary  critics  have  praised  Rousseau  for 
introducing  into  France  the  dreamy  melancholy 
of  northern  lands.  Yes,  but  this  melancholy  is  not 
found  in  Emile,  which  is,  on  the  contrary,  an  opti- 
mistic book,  with  a  joyous  confidence  in  the  future. 
Really  living  and  fertile  minds  are  those  which  look, 
not  to  the  past,  but  to  the  future  ages :  Rousseau  is  of 
their  number.  In  his  sovereign  disdain  of  antiquated 
tradition,  he  prepared  the  youth  of  the  newly  dawn- 
ing era.  With  Voltaire,  said  Goethe,  a  world  has 
come  to  an  end;  with  Rousseau,  a  world  begins. 
The  eighteenth  century,  especially  with  Rousseau, 
is  the  rally  to  eternal  nature,  the  commencement 
of  a  forward  movement,  a  bold  anticipation  of  the 
future. 

I  am  willing  that  Rousseau  be  criticised  and  his 
errors  blamed :  but  let  us  not  be  forbidden  to  ad- 
mire him.  He  will  not  cease  to  be  read,  followed,  and 
obeyed,  in  some,  at  least,  of  his  prescriptions.  He 
will  always  be  a  leaven  of  life  and  moral  regeneration. 
He  can  proudly  say  to  his  critic,  "Strike,  but 
listen."  Above  all,  he  will  be  loved  to  all  eternity. 


ROUSSEAU  117 

I  am  well  aware  that  Mme.  du  Deffand,  who  re- 
proached him  with  wishing  to  plunge  everything 
back  into  chaos,  called  him  "an  antipathetic 
sophist."  But  this  is  merely  an  exception,  a  voice 
lost  in  the  chorus  of  praise  which  is  everywhere 
uplifted  in  his  honor.  The  women  at  all  times  have 
been  enraptured  with  Rousseau,  and  men  have  been 
no  more  niggardly  with  the  tribute  of  their  devotion. 
"I  love  Emile,"  said  Saint-Marc  Girardin,  and  he 
learnedly  expounded  his  reasons.  He  is  not  the 
only  one  who  has  spoken  in  this  way.  "It  will 
always  be  impossible  for  us  not  to  love  Jean- Jacques 
Rousseau/7  declared  Sainte-Beuve  fifty  years  ago. 
And  recently,  the  same  declaration  came,  like  a 
refrain,  from  the  pen  of  M.  Jules  Lemaltre:  "It  is 
impossible  for  me  not  to  love  him :  I  feel  that  he  was 
good."  Let  us  love  him,  because  he  was  indeed 
good,  because,  thanks  to  him,  a  breath  of  humanity 
and  good-will  penetrated  and  softened  men's  hearts, 
because  he  himself  loved  truth,  and  because  he  con- 
ceived an  ardent  love  of  justice,  and  from  his  child- 
hood was  inspired  with  transports  of  anger  at  its 
violation.  Let  us  love  him  and  pity  him  also  because 
of  his  sufferings.  Let  us  leave  to  curious  and  prying 
minds  the  task  of  deciding  what  was  the  cause  of 
these  sufferings,  the  mental  malady,  the  kind  of 
madness  with  which  he  was  afflicted.  We  wish 


118  ROUSSEAU 

not  to  know  whether  he  were  neurotic,  hysterical,  or 
simply  melancholy  mad.  What  is  certain  and  enough 
for  us,  is  that  he  was  a  man  of  heart  and  of  genius 
to  boot. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

OF  Rousseau's  own  works,  besides  Emile,  should  be  read :  — 

Pro  jet  pour  V  education  de  M.  de  Sainte-Marie  (1740). 

La  Nouvelle  Heloise,  5th  part,  Letter  III  (1761). 

Emile  et  Sophie  ou  les  Solitaires  (1778). 

Lettre  a  Christophe  de  Beaumont,  archeveque  de  Paris  (1763). 

Considerations  sur  le  gouvernement  de  Pologne  et  sur  la  reforme 
projetee  en  1772  (1772). 

In  the  Correspondance,  the  Letters  to  the  prince  of  Wurtem- 
berg  (1763),  and  passim. 

Only  the  most  important  and  recent  of  the  numerous  publica- 
tions dealing  with  Emile  and  Rousseau's  ideas  are  mentioned 
below :  — 

F.  BROCKERDOFF,  J.-J.  Rousseau,  sein  Leben  und  seine  Werke, 
3  vols.,  Leipzig,  1863. 

H.  BEAUDOUIN,  La  vie  et  les  ceuvres  de  J.-J.  Rousseau,  2  vols., 
Paris,  1871. 

SAINT-MARC  GIRARDIN,  /.-/.  Rousseau,  sa  vie  et  ses  ouvragest 
2  vols.,  Paris,  1875. 

J.-J.  Rousseau  juge  par  les  Genevois  d'aujourd'hui,  lectures 
given  at  Geneva,  on  the  occasion  of  the  centenary  of  2d  July, 
1878,  Geneva,  1879.  See  especially :  Les  idees  de  Rousseau  sur 
I 'education,  by  ANDRE  OLTRAMARE,  and  Caracteristique  generate 
de  Rousseau,  by  H.  FREDERIC  AMIEL. 

JOHN  MORLEY,  Rousseau,  2  vols.,  London,  1888  (1st  edition, 
1873). 

E.  RITTER,  La  famille  et  la  jeunesse  de  J.-J.  Rousseau,  Paris, 
1896. 

119 


120  ROUSSEAU 

STRECKEISEN-MOULTON,  J.-J.  Rousseau,  ses  amis  et  ses  enne- 
mis,  2  vols.,  Paris,  1865. 

A.  CHUQUET,  J.-J.  Rousseau,  in  the  Great  French  Writers  series, 
Paris,  1893. 

DAVIDSON,  Rousseau  and  Education  according  to  Nature,  in 
The  Great  Educators  series,  New  York  and  London,  1898. 

J.  TEXTE,  J.-J.  Rousseau  et  les  origines  du  cosmopolitisme 
litter  air  e,  Paris,  1895. 

A.  ESPINAS,  Le  systeme  de  J.-J.  Rousseau,  in  la  Revue  Inter- 
nationale de  renseignement,  vols.  XXX  and  XXXI,  1895  and 
1896.  See  also:  MUSSET-PATHAY,  Histoire  de  la  vie  et  des 
ouvrages  de  J.-J.  Rousseau  (1821) ;  ROBERT  H.  QUICK,  Essays  on 
educational  reformers,  London,  1868;  Rousseau's  Emile,  trans- 
lated and  abridged  by  E.  Worthington,  with  notes  by  Jules  Steeg, 
Boston  and  London,  1883;  Emile,  abridged  and  annotated  by 
William  H.  Payne,  New  York,  1893;  HANUS,  Rousseau  and 
Education  according  to  Nature,  New  York,  1897 ;  M.  GREARD, 
L' education  des  femmes  par  les  femmes;  and  finally,  articles  or 
chapters  devoted  to  Rousseau  by  M.  BRUNETIERE,  Etudes 
critiques  sur  la  litter ature  francaise,  3d  and  4th  series;  by 
M.  FAGUET,  XVIIP  siecle:  Etudes  litteraires,  1890;  by  TAINE, 
Les  origines  de  la  France  contemporaine :  VAncien  regime,  1882; 
by  MELCHIOR  DE  VOGUE,  Histoire  et  Poesie,  1898;  by  M.  E. 
LINTILHAC,  Litterature  francaise,  etc. 


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